


A Glorious Disaster

by thesecondseal



Series: More Than Smoke: A Noir AU [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Consensual Sex, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Detective Noir, Dragon Age Holiday Cheer, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family Fluff, Fighting Kink, Film Noir, Fluff, Mabari, Mabari Puppies, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Playful Sex, Rare Pairings, Rough Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-05-14 16:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 48,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5750530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the alternate ending for Smoke. If you've chosen the Garrett x Essa OTP in our little "choose your own otp adventure" then the Epilogue with Cullen *does not occur*. </p><p>Instead, we get to wait, five years in fact, for Essa and Garrett to get their acts together. But then there is so much fluff and smut and adorableness. Because over on tumblr I am not the only one weak for these two and there have been sooooo many prompts and requests. I'll be adding to this work over the summer. So if you're not on tumblr, these will be NEW TO YOU! :D</p><p>UPDATE: There will be quite a few works added to this over the next few weeks. I've counted 20 extra works on tumblr that fall after Essa and Garrett's epilogue, fluff and smut, and more fluff and smut. it's possible some are on other works here (like the Satinalia ones) but most will be new to AO3 and by putting them all here, they'll be in chronological order. </p><p>*Say Something and I'll Be Seeing You (chapters one and two of this work) occur between chapters four and five of Act IV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Say Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Essa and Garrett's goodbye. AKA the sad smut. This falls after Ashes Long Cold (chapter four of Act Four of More Than Smoke).

“You have your leads?”

Garrett was sprawled across Essa’s bed wearing nothing but a loose pair of flannel sleep pants and weak grey bands of early morning light. One bare foot hung off the end of her mattress, bouncing idly as he sipped his coffee, turned a page of the newspaper he was only pretending to read. His hair was sleep-mussed, dark eyes still heavy-lidded, muscles languid from sleep. He was blatantly tempting them both now; she couldn’t say that she really minded.

“We do.” Essa perched on her desk, feet propped in the seat of her ladder-back chair, arms draped over the top rung as she leaned forward. “I think Jader is going to lead us straight to Haven, but I suppose we’ll see.”

She held her mug between her palms watching the coffee bubble and steam. She was getting better about channeling her frustration—and therefore her magic—into useful expenditures. She lifted one hand, heated the air above her until it rose fast toward the ceiling, spinning the blades of the overhead fan and rustling Garrett’s paper.

“How’s your sister holding up?”

“Nervous.” She brought her cup to her lips, blew a blister of winter across the top and watched the ice form and melt. It wasn’t her strongest element, but she had gotten better with Bethany’s tutelage. ”Afraid to be hopeful. We’ve been at this for how many years now?”

She knew exactly how long it had been. Could count back to the exact moment when Cari had driven her knives into Mathieu’s throat. She remembered vividly the heat, the flame. Would never forget the inhuman screams as she rained fire onto the red lyrium twistings that wore the remains of their brother’s face

“Too long,” Garrett said for her. He ran one hand through his hair and Essa lost more maudlin thoughts to the fascinating play of his abdominal muscles. He raised a brow. “Is my dastardly plan working then?”

Essa laughed. “By the Mabari, I do so hate you, Garrett Hawke.”

He grinned at her, unabashed and obnoxiously beautiful. Hers but for so many turns of fate. “Come here.”

“I am not letting you seduce me again.”

He snorted with laughter, nearly choking on an ill-timed sip of coffee. “When have I ever seduced you?”

“From the moment I met you,” she accused, setting her cup down and dropping from her perch. “Flaunting all of those muscles and that atrocious attitude. As if an angry woman like me could ever resist.”

He placed his cup on the nightstand. “If those are the requirements for seduction, Trevelyan. You’re at least as culpable.”

Theirs had been a wild affair, combative and full of presumptions, pitiless hearts taken as for granted as willing bodies. They hadn’t exactly started out lying to themselves and each other, but it had been the inexorable revelation of truth that ended them. She had been afraid to love him, knowing that such folly would spell ruin for them both.

“You know.” He reached out, caught her wrist and tugged her onto the bed beside him. “I had never seen anyone take a punch the way you did. Even Aveline blocks.”

Essa laughed. “I do too mostly, but that night, I was angry.”

She fell onto the bed with a grunt, head pillowed against his propped up arm, side tucked against the front of a body she knew nearly as well as her own. It was strange to be so comfortable with another’s form. She had never been much for physical affection, but Garrett had always made it too easy. For all his domineering ways, he only crowded her when they were fighting or fucking. Sometimes it had been hard to separate the two.

“Damn right you were.” He lifted her hand to his lips, placed a kiss on her knuckle that was too warm, too wet to be interpreted as merely friendly. “I broke two fingers on that hard head of yours.”

He still sounded vaguely astonished.

“That’s because I’d cast a barrier around it.”

“Around your head?!” He looked so shocked and betrayed that Essa burst out laughing.

Surely, he had realized.

“You really didn’t know?” she asked in surprise.

“No, I didn’t know!” Garrett all but shouted in reply, glaring indignantly. “All this time I thought your head was forged from silverite!”

He was serious. Well, maybe not about the silverite, but…Essa gaped at him. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes, I mean it.” His jaw jutted forward, eyes hardening to onyx, and even knowing that retaliation was coming, Essa couldn’t stop herself from chortling, loud and bright into the morning shadows. His scowl darkened toward menace.

“Oh, Maker! Your face, Garrett!” She rolled over, muffling howls of mirth into the pillow so that she wouldn’t wake the building. “I…”

But it was no use, and he had her now, fingers dancing across her ribs in tickling dashes. His beard scratched across the back of her neck and Essa screamed and kicked at him, catching him in the shin and setting off a brief, furious struggle that only ended when he took pity on her failed breath and helpless giggles.

“Alright, woman, no suffocating.” Garrett rolled her over beneath him, propped himself on his hands and knees so that he was no longer touching her.

Essa grinned up at him. “Yeah, it’d be a shame if you killed me now that you and I are finally getting to be such good friends.”

Something stirred in his eyes, promises they could never make, declarations held so long that they were no longer true enough to win the day.

Essa took a breath. “I love you, you know.”

Garrett blinked. “What?”

“I love you,” she repeated belligerently. “I should have told you a year ago, when you scared me to death, or when—“

She blushed, glanced over his shoulder at the paint-chipped tin ceiling and drew in an angry breath.

“When…?” Garrett prompted. His voice had gone soft and danger as he loomed over her. 

“When we had sex that last time, after…”

For a moment Essa felt as vulnerable as she had a year ago, watching his lungs struggle and his heart fail. She shook her head. She still shuddered to remember how close they had come to losing him.

“I know,” he said.

He sat up, knees still between hers, and Essa scrambled back, shoving her hair from her face and fighting her own insecurities to meet his gaze.

“You know?”

Garrett nodded. “Realized it that same night, in fact. Right after I woke up not dead and realized I loved you.”

“Realized you…” Essa whispered. “What?”

He wasn’t making sense. He was supposed to be the…well maybe he wasn’t supposed to be the reasonable one, but even back then he had already been in love with someone else.

“Blighted inconvenient, isn’t it?” Garrett observed with a lopsided smile.

“But…” She couldn’t bring herself to offer the names of the hearts that stood between them. He knew them as surely as she did, knew to count their own among them.

He nodded. “Yes. I told you before, pity we aren’t the types to share.”

“Oh, Garrett…” Essa sat up, reached for him then drew away, afraid of what their touch could mean now. “We really do make a mess of everything we touch, don’t we?”

“We do.” But he caught her hands in both of his and held on. “I won’t be here when you get back.”

He was as serious as she had ever seen him, worry and nerves gleaming beneath his usual swagger.

“You’re going after him.” Her fingers tightened in his.

He nodded. “Beth has the job at the hospital; she’s settled into school. You finally got your break in the case. Varric will be going with you, of course…I don’t think I’ll get a better chance than right now. Do you?”

“No.” Essa blinked as sudden rage of farewell filled her chest, left her near gasping with its bitter certainty. “I don’t think you will.”

She crawled across the bed, stopped before him when they knelt, knees to knees and breath between them.

“I owe you, you know.” He opened his mouth, brow drawn down in negation, but Essa shook her head fiercely. “No, I do. I…I’m not afraid of what I am anymore. Without you…”

Without him, she would still be running from her demons, terrified that her temper and her desires would only ever lead to ruin. Essa struggled and failed to find the words to tell him, but those words were bound up in the touch of another and had no place here.

“It’s alright.” His knuckles grazed her cheek, brought her eyes up searching for his in the low morning light. “I think I might know.”

She rose up on her knees, leaned toward him until he caught her hips in his hands, held the last of a heartbeat between them. It was supposed to be a goodbye kiss, but once Essa’s lips touched his, she remembered all the things she should have told him in the time before they had learned to rely on words. Her hands slid like whispers from his cheeks to his throat, thumbs sweeping across the unfaltering rush of his pulse.

“Essa…” His fingers dug into flare of her waist, neither pulling her closer nor pushing her away. She rocked gently in his grasp, pushed forward just enough to feel his body stir against the fabric that separated them.

“I’ve a mind to seduce you, Garrett Hawke,” she confessed quietly, bending to drop kisses along his collarbone. Every scrape of her teeth was a silent entreaty. “Will you let me?”

“If it’s for the right reasons,” he murmured against her hair. “If you’re still running from whatever happened with Rutherford, then no.”

Essa sat back abruptly on her heels. The air fell cold and aching between them. “I’m sorry for that night.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth before continuing. “If I had known you were as foolish as me, I would never have asked you…”

He had never given her any reason to believe that she wasn’t alone in her impossible feelings for him.

“Oh, sweetheart…” Garrett caught her face in his hands, met her eyes with a rakish smile. “I am absolutely as foolish as you. Never doubt that.”

He pulled her into his lap and kissed her, arms sliding slow and warm around her back, the familiar embrace cast wondrous and strange by shades of tenderness they had never allowed themselves. Essa’s knees fell to either side of his hips, held fast as she leaned against his chest, broke against him like a wave.

“Garrett…”

But she clamped her teeth together over useless what-ifs and why-nots, closed her eyes against tears that would only wound them both. When his lips moved over hers, there was among the shadows of all the kisses they had shared before the sweet, fading sadness of vows long lost and unuttered. His palm slipped beneath her shirt and skimmed up her spine, callouses catching on fine invisible hairs, raising a wake of gooseflesh with a battle-roughened caress.

Her shirt rucked up, the soft flannel gathering at his elbow. Cool air flowed like balm across too-warm skin and Essa pulled back for a breath she could never hope to catch, reached up to tug the shirt over her head.

Garrett smiled, stopped her with a kiss to the top button. Her hands fell uselessly to her sides and he nudged her back against his arm, held her with fingers teasing the nape of her neck as he began plucking open the buttons of her shirt with his other hand, face a study of uncharacteristic patience. The flannel parted over her skin. He bent toward her, dropped a kiss on her sternum, followed each unbuttoning down with whispered kisses until Essa was pressed back, lying prone against the taut muscles of his arm.

“You healed me too.” He murmured the words against her stomach, so quietly she wasn’t certain she had heard him. “Not exactly what I was expecting out of some good ol’ fashioned rebound sex.”

He placed a sharp bite against her navel and she pretended that was the reason for her swiftly indrawn breath, rather than the look of reverence in his eyes.

“It was hate sex,” she reminded him, head falling back against his waiting palm.

Garrett chuckled, opened his mouth against her skin so that she could feel his laughter traveling low. “Yes, it was.”

He lowered her to the bed and Essa shrugged out of her shirt sleeves, lay before him in nothing but a scrap of scarlet satin. He traced a scar low on her ribs with the backs of his fingernails, smiled when she shivered and glowered up at him.

“Do you think–?” He caught the words back and shook his head. “No, better not.”

Definitely better not, she thought. She already wondered enough for the both of them, knew only that they were as likely to wreck each other as themselves and everyone around them.

“I think you’re wearing too much,” Essa answered, sparing them both.

“We are,” Garrett agreed, but neither made any move toward the remedy. “Close your eyes.”

She obeyed instantly, her sigh of surrender a brutal contrast to every laughing contradiction that defined them. She wondered if he noticed, if that was why she lay so long in the dark behind her eyelids waiting for him.

“We’re too much alike,” he said soberly.

“Yes, we are.”

The next kiss landed on the top of her right foot and Essa flinched, fly stung and trembling as he moved to the other. He made his way up her legs, lips lingering on the inside of her left, tasting a scar she had gotten breaking up a fight between Soldier and Garrett’s Caleb. Too much history, she thought, breath stalling as his cheek rubbed across her thigh, beard a soft, ticklish scratch on sensitive flesh. Too much blood between them.

She let him lift her hips, shimmied teasingly at him, hoping for laughter or a smile she couldn’t see. Anything to slow their hallowed, fragile descent. He slid her underwear down her legs, bent to place an open-mouthed kiss on the delicate skin revealed. Then his hands slid beneath her hips, fingers kneading gently as lifted her to his mouth with a groan.

The sound drummed through her, an ache of promise and Essa reached for him, hands catching in his hair, thinking to pull him up her body, change the trajectory of their dance to something more familiar.

“Garrett—“

He kissed her then, lapped at her once, an almost hesitant query, and the fall of his name became a beseeching sigh. His mouth returned in earnest, moved over the warmth of her, lips and tongue a sweep of maddening grace as she hung, weight balanced between the unwavering splay of his hands and the anchor of her head and shoulders against the mattress.

She stopped trying to speak. Could only mumble broken pleas and keen helpless praises toward the possibilities he worked into her desperate flesh. Essa clutched blindly at the sheets as he sucked at her, alternated strokes of tongue with the careful nip of his teeth until she was writhing, babbling, a thousand fragments of herself. Her vision blurred, brighter than the light spreading through her blinds, and then there was nothing else. Nothing beyond pleasure’s determined insistence and the soft sounds of his approval vibrating through her body. 

Essa struggled for breath, opened her eyes to find Garrett’s gaze on her face. The shock of intimacy was enough and she arched against his mouth, barely muffled a scream into her palm as her climax blazed through her, an immediate immolation, beautiful and terrible in its suddenness.

“Too…hot.” She jerked in his grasp on a sting of panic.

“Hey…” Garrett rubbed his beard against her thigh, grounding her with the sudden abrasion. “Hey…I’ve got you.”

He lowered her hips to the bed, pressed the heels of his palms hard enough against her hipbones to send a thrum of dull pain through the endless tremors of her orgasm, cooling the edges just enough that she could ride them out without losing pleasure to fear.

“Thank you,” she whispered, getting her elbows beneath her and lifting up enough to falter a smile at him. He saw too much, she thought, and yet neither of them had seen enough when it counted.

“My turn.”

Her knees were still shaking as Essa dragged herself up, pretending to ignore Garrett’s smirk when her thighs touched and an aftershock left her hissing and dizzy and wobbling over him. He held out a helpful hand for balance, but she batted it away, tumbled them both to the bed in a tangle of arms and legs and laughter. She was rougher with him than he had been with her, but then her knees were still trembling by the time she finally got them underneath her. She shoved him to his back with a bold grin.

“You are a barbarian,” he decided. His grin was a broad, remorseless curve as Essa divested him of his pants and briefs, threw them to the floor to be retrieved with whatever sorrow and regret she might find later.

“I am.”

She moved over his body. Scattered slow, deliberate kisses over every scar and quiver, counting his heartbeats as they sent blood rushing to warm and scent the skin beneath her lips. He smelled of rain and steel, gun oil and battle. There was a hint of ash beneath the clean musk of his sweat, and she wondered if the pyre was his or her own.

“You remember that,” she warned, lingering over the scar above his heart. “When nostalgia paints me in shades of rose and gold.”

Essa kissed her way down the ladder of his ribcage, followed a ridge of muscle to his hip, scored warm flesh with her teeth once just to hear his breath catch.

“You must promise me the same,” he grunted, hands moving restlessly on the bed.

She took him into her mouth without warning, slowed them both with the same devastating attention he had shown her. His fingers tunneled through her hair, closed into tight fists just shy of too much, as if he didn’t quite trust either of them. Garrett’s thumbs stroked faint eddies over her hollowed cheeks, hips rocking gently to meet her downward slide and Essa whimpered against him, wanting more. Wanting everything. Knowing they had no time.

“Enough.”

His voice was hoarse when he pulled her away, dragged her up his body and kissed her until she was a boneless, fumbling thing and melting against him. Essa’s hand clattered across the nightstand, knocking two knives to the floor ahead of Garrett’s abandoned coffee as she yanked open the drawer and searched for a condom.

“Here.” She dropped the packet in his hand, moved over him and back in a long wet slide that left them both gasping as she made room for his hands between their bodies. She took the empty wrapper from him, dropped it somewhere already forgotten as his lips teased her breasts.

“Now.” Essa whispered into the quiet room. “Please.”

His hands were on her arms, touch gentle enough to wound as he positioned her over him and finally slid inside. Their sighs mingled into groans, the joining of their bodies the answer to questions they had never had the courage to ask. Too late, she realized, as they moved, rose together. It was too late for whatever they might have been.

“You better not be crying, Trevelyan.” The command was tender against the frantic pulse in her throat, his lips moving like silk and sin against an old scar, and Essa knew that she had never felt a more exquisite threat.

“Of course I’m not crying.”

His lips moved to her cheeks, kissing away the tears she would forever deny. He drew her down, the broken tattoo of their hearts filling the scant space between them.

“Liars.” Garrett breathed the word against the shell of her ear. “Both of us.”


	2. I'll Be Seeing You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a recent microstory prompt "things you said when it was over" that follows Say Something.

She was sleeping when he left her, ribbons of late afternoon light moving lazily across tangled sheets and sun-bronzed limbs, her dark hair a cloud across her face, rich and umber, like the shadows that crept behind the slanting sunlight.

“Don’t you dare leave,” she had told him, snuggling close once their bodies had cooled enough to maintain skin to skin contact. “Without saying goodbye.”

It had been an easy promise to make, he wasn’t leaving until she departed for Jader, would no doubt see her at the tavern before then. She would be in one of the impeccable suits she wore like armor, hat tilted at an angle nearly as arrogant as her chin, eyes wary and guarded again, hands just a little mean. He had never known anyone who could love and hate as fiercely as Essa, and until he met her, Garrett had thought he felt too much, feared the depths of his own emotions.

The woman was an unapologetic curse, and in a city that dealt death behind smiles, she healed with honest wounds.

“Bad form, Hawke.” Essa rolled over with a yawn, scrubbed one hand across her eyes. “Skipping out while my back is turned.”

He chuckled, but the sound was more of a bluff than usual; it fell flat into the quiet between them.

“Thought it might be best.” He finished tying his oxfords and stood up from the foot of the bed.

“You said you wouldn’t leave,” she reminded him, voice lacking all accusation.

Garrett moved to the side of the bed, stared down at her.“I said I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye,” he admitted. “But I’m not saying goodbye.”

She frowned, the freckles across her nose shivering in confusion.

“I’ll wish you safe travels, and love. I’ll threaten to break Rutherford’s legs if he hurts you, and I’ll dance at your wedding if you’d like, but I’m not saying goodbye.”

He bent down to kiss her, hard enough that she rose up against his mouth, hands and lips immediately clinging. Garrett pulled away, a rough sigh all that he had to combat temptation.

“Goodbye is for people you don’t carry with you,” he told her, stopping only once he reached the relative safety of her bedroom door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Trevelyan.”


	3. I Can't Begin to Tell You (Alternate Epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I debated posting this anywhere, but the notion of More Than Smoke turning into a Choose Your Own ending began to really appeal to me. The comparisons between AU Essa and Canon Essa made me increasingly curious. So much of the character and relationship building that occurs between Cullen and Essa in my canon fic is not simply absent from Smoke, but instead takes place between Essa and Garrett. Does this mean that she and Cullen were never going to work? No, I don't believe so. The original epilogue is written as a hopeful beginning and I absolutely think they were on the way to happily ever after.
> 
> But life's funny and love gleams with so many facets. There are always what-ifs, parts of ourselves we don't know, people and places and events that shape us into different versions of ourselves. What if that epilogue never happened? What if Essa's escape from Orlais was delayed? What if she was part of Cullen's healing, but not his forever? What if Beth was wrong about there being two Essa's? What if Kirkwall somehow became as much a part of her as Seaside? What if Kirkwall got a sneaky new viscount who was determined to bring the city's champions out of the shadows?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *note. ALTERNATE Ending (this is important) as in the other epilogue with its cute promises never happened. :)

_Five Years Later:_

The large craftsman home was not what Garrett expected to see tucked at the back in a cul-de-sac on the edge of Hightown, a pleasant enough quarter hour walk from the Hawke family estate. The front yard was tidy, neat hedges and a pair of hydrangea bushes on either side of the steps, blossoms hanging thick and heavy like light bruises. Old growth oaks shaded the block, dropped the summer heat to something almost bearable. Still he carried his jacket, wore his sleeves rolled up to his elbows without apology. If his prospective employer didn’t like it, then—Varric’s recommendation or no—he probably didn’t want to work for them.

The front door was a half lite, top half almost completely frosted glass, and painted white along with the rest of the trim and the angled porch columns. It was a stark contrast to the dark blue exterior of the home, brought out the sharp black lettering on the frosted glass. _Jennys Investigations._ The image of an arrow bisected the words, bright red and pointed up into flight’s pinnacle. There was an umbrella stand to one side, a cast iron ash bucket on the other. From the mail slot, Garrett could hear strains of music, a dark, moody blue melody as wordless as the day.

He rapped quietly on the door just before he opened it, jangling the brass bell above his head and announcing his presence more loudly than he intended. The entryway was plain, hardwood floors, buttery walls, more crisp white trim. Overhead a ceiling fan circulated shade-cooled air in a lazy rotation. Columns on either side divided the space into a pair of offices. Straight ahead of him was a large dining room, stained glass windows on the wall beyond casting bars of primary colors across a wide table and standing record player.

“You here about the job?” a voice called in a muffled echo from a partially open door beyond.

“I am.” He hung his jacket on a coat peg, stepped farther into the cool interior.  “I can provide references,” he added, a smug grin hiding in his offer. “If my reputation isn’t enough.”

“You could be the Champion of Kirkwall,” came the snarky reply a beat before an ample bottom backed through the door, slamming it open against the dining room wall. “And I—“

She was carrying a stack of cardboard boxes that towered over her head, leaving nothing but a pair strong arms and long legs for his perusal.  A white long sleeved blouse was rolled up over her forearms, not dissimilarly from his own. He watched the muscles in her arms flex, dragged his gaze down to grey trousers and plum suede heels that alternated kicks into whatever furniture happened to get in her way.

“Here, allow me.” Garrett strode across the room quickly, didn’t notice until too late that his potential employer had gone completely still.

*

“What are you doing here?” Essa’s voice rose in surprise, heart hammering a glad measure as the box before her face moved to reveal a very surprised pair of dark eyes.

“What are _you_ doing here?”

Garrett pulled the second box from her hands and dropped it unceremoniously to the dining room table. He dragged her into a hard hug that crushed any reply she might have made right from her lungs. Essa returned the embrace with equal ferocity.

“By the mabari,” she swore as he lifted her off her feet to spin them in a tight, happy circle. “It’s good to see you. It’s been—what?—three _years_?”

She glowered at him for his absence.

“Shit,” Garrett muttered, almost appropriately abashed. “Has it been that long since Ester’s dedication? Bethany’s going to kill me for not coming home sooner.”

“She is,” Essa agreed, arms still around his neck, body pressed to the solid tower of him as the last strains of saxophone faded, the record playing out into skipping silence. “I take it you haven’t seen her yet?”

“Not yet.” He pressed a kiss to her mouth, a buss that she thought may have lingered longer than was proper, but couldn’t quite be sure.

Essa grinned. That was Garrett.

“She’s at the hospital this morning. Figured I’d surprise her when her shift’s over.”

“Well, surprise her gently,” she warned. “You can’t just sneak up on pregnant ladies!”

“All I can say, is they better name _this one_ after me.” He pulled her closer, arms so achingly familiar that Essa could hardly breathe. “I still can’t believe they gave you the first born.”

“They didn’t give me anyone,” she laughed, dropping a kiss on each of his smiling cheeks.  “How long are you back for?”

“For good, I think.”

Garrett didn’t seem to notice how her muscles shifted from soft to wary. Essa wondered if Kirkwall was really big enough for the both of them.

“Maker’s breath,” he murmured against her neck. “I have missed you, Trevelyan.”

“You’ve gotten sentimental in your old age.” She kicked him lightly in the shin, merriment hitching with accusation. “Put me down, you ogre.”

“No.” He spun them again, adjusted his arms around her waist until she could feel the beat of his heart against her breast. His beard tickled her throat and he breathed in, a slow sighing inhalation that sounded too much like homecoming. “You smell good.”

“I smell like sweat and file dust,” she returned sharply.

He took another breath as she rallied a not-quite token struggle.

“Stop that,” he poked her in the ribs, eliciting a shriek of mutiny when he placed what might have been a friendly kiss had it not landed upon her skittering pulse. “Rutherford will just have to forgive me.”

“What?” Essa’s playful resistance stopped and she pushed at his arms in earnest, tried to get enough space between them to stare into his face. “What did you say?”

“Rutherford,” Garrett repeated slowly, frowning down at her as if she were completely daft. “Will have to forgive me.” He jostled her gently. “For groping you, I mean.”

“I—“ Essa floundered in confusion. “You owe Cullen no apologies.”

She pushed at him again and something in her face seemed to finally catch his attention.  Garrett slowly slid her back to the floor. Essa put a hasty step between them.

“Didn’t Varric—“ She turned turned to switch off the turntable. “Didn’t he tell you?”

Essa retrieved one of her boxes, moved cautiously past him toward her office. Her steps sounded louder than usual, as if the whole house were holding its breath in expectation of the code her heels tapped out against the hardwood floor.

“Tell me what?” Garrett asked. He picked up the second box, following behind her with quiet menace.

Andraste’s knickers, it had been nearly three years. “I’m going to kill your best friend, Garrett.”

“If this is going where I think it is, you may have to get in line.”

Essa led him into her office, a sunny space with too many windows and too few shadows for a Kirkwall gumshoe. She loved it unreservedly.

“Just put it there by the closet.” She nodded to the corner, dropped her own box atop a large stainless steel desk, a relic from before the last Blight with chipped grey paint the color the old dreadnoughts.

Garrett watched her closely as she put one step, then another, and finally the desk between them. She knew he didn’t miss the tension in her shoulders, or how it eased when she was safely on the other side.

“Cullen and I—“ Essa began.

“What?”

The interruption was so surly that she almost smiled. It was an old scar, if there had ever been a true wound at all, but she knew he wouldn’t see it that way. At least not to start with.

“It’s not so bad as that, we’re friends still, and not remotely the kind of friends you and I ended up.” She chuckled, raised one brow in an attempt to smooth the anger from his face.

Garrett only glared at her, chin lifted in defiance of humor.

“He and Cari were wed in the spring.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, watching a dozen thoughts flash across the dark mirrors of his gaze. “I can’t believe Bethany didn’t tell you. Or that you didn’t see the announcement in the papers.”

“Oh, I can,” Garrett growled, prowling around the office that, until that moment, had never felt small to Essa.

“And I saw the paper, but I didn’t read the article.” He folded his arms across the broad expanse of his chest. She tried to ignore the tease of corded muscle shifting below the rolled up cuffs of his shirtsleeves. “I thought it was a different Trevelyan-Rutherford marriage. Fully expected to come back and find you happily on the baby train with Beth.”

Essa choked. “Andraste’s ass, Hawke!” She reached for the remains of her morning tea, sipped it down in between jagged exhalations. “Did I become someone else entirely in this fantasy of yours?”

She rubbed her throat with one hand, blinked tears from her eyes as she tried to get her breathing back under control.

“I don’t know!” he nearly shouted. Essa watched in surprise as he shoved one hand through his dark hair, scattering the thick locks into something spiky and angry. “He left you for your _sister_?”

Maker, preserve her. He had changed about as much as she had.

“If you punch my wall, I will beat your ass,” Essa snapped, watching muscles bunch beneath his white button-down. “There’s a punching bag out back in the gym if you need it.”

She folded her arms at her waist, leaned back against the low credenza that ran the length of the wall behind her.

“It sounds a lot worse when you say it that way,” she added. “And isn’t remotely true. He didn’t leave me. We left each other. And Cari certainly had nothing to do with it.”

She waited for some of the fight to leave him before continuing. “They’re a good match. Save the templars and all of that. They’ve turned Seaside into quite the rehabilitation village. I gave Cullen the cottage as a wedding present.”

“You did _what_?” He was definitely shouting now. “What about your animals?”

His anger on her behalf warmed her, but it wasn’t necessary. Essa reached for him, palm flat on the desk between them.

“Greta and Soldier spend their time back and forth between here and there. Geri has become quite the therapy horse. He’s made so many friends among the ex-templars, that he’s gotten a bit round on sweets. I see him on the weekends, along with the seven others who work with me and in our classes.”

“So you’re saving the templars too?” he asked bitterly.

“Not every day,” she told him quietly. “Two weekends a month. I…”

She bit her lip, stared past him to watch dust motes dance in slanted sunlight.

“Cullen’s recovery I could handle. For all his worries, he wasn’t any more violent than you and I ever were to one another. I trust him, but…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t hack it with the others. Too many bad memories of my own. Too many scars.”

She had done more harm than good to start with, to both of them and too many others. Essa pushed to her feet, paced back and forth in the small space behind her desk. “His work is important.”

“More important than you?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “Not to him, but yes. “

His fingers wrapped around her wrist; Essa dragged herself to a halt against the anchor of him.

“Garrett.” His scowl was everything she had ever loved about the man. Essa placed her palm against his cheek, finally gave him the certainty of her gaze. “I’m _happy_.  Not content in whatever perceived martyrdom has you wanting to burn Seaside to the ground. I love my life. I have good friends and better family. I have someone I can count on if my magic ever gets out of hand. Which, by the way, it hasn’t, not in years. I have gardens and horses and mabari and everyday I’m helping people find their way in a city that failed to consume me.”

She smiled cheekily at him. “You find my life lacking? Cause I can take you out back and beat some sense into you for old time’s sake, if you’d like.”

“Nothing about you has ever been lacking, Essa Trevelyan.”

He stepped around the edge of the desk, tugged her hand so that she met him on one side. His hand was unsteady, a fine tremble that she couldn’t quite understand.

“Don’t you dare shake me.” Essa muttered, reaching up to catch his other hand before he grabbed her arm.

His fingers slid between hers, a tight lace that felt too perfect, too familiar.

Too much like a trap into which she had let herself stumble.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded, a sudden trill of knowing settling cold and bitter in her stomach. She yanked her hand away, tried to cover her nerves by reaching again for her teacup.

“How much you want to wager?” Garrett asked softly. “That there’s also something important Varric didn’t tell _you_?”

*

Garrett tried to keep his expression neutral, but Anders would never be a neutral topic.He didn’t accept heartbreak graciously, had only stopped meeting the memories with rage a year ago. Essa’s eyes went wide, smoke then steel, the flash of a bullet’s smile. She read him as she always had, too perfectly and too deeply, and saw old pain and worn scars beneath swagger’s shield. Her fingers tightened hard around her teacup and the ceramic made a high, almost cheerful sound as it shattered in her palm, casting rose chintz across the room like elegant shrapnel.

“Oh, fuck me,” Essa muttered, staring down at the shards of porcelain lodged into the flesh beneath her thumb.

“Maybe later.” The response was quick, as reflexive as the grab he made for her hand.

“Sorry,” he added, misinterpreting her grimace. “Habit.”

She snorted, laughter teasing her eyes bright above her temper. “I know. You’ve never felt the need to apologize before.”

He hadn’t, and damn her for pointing that out. Damn her for not pulling away, for smelling like citrus and sweat and gun smoke, and yes, a hint of file dust. And damn him, Garrett thought, that after all these years she still felt more like home than anywhere and anyone he had ever fought for.

He was going to kill Varric.

“Let’s see how bad it is,” Garrett murmured, turning her hand over in his.

“Why do I feel like we’re talking about more than a few cuts?” Essa whispered back.

He counted at least five small pieces of teacup embedded in her skin, traced his fingers over calluses and scars he knew as well as his own.

“Tweezers?”

“Bathroom or kitchen,” Essa said without looking at him. Her hair had fallen loose from the knot on top of her head; a tendril teased his past cheek and Garrett caught it with his other hand, rubbed the silken wave between his thumb and forefinger.

“It’s gotten long.”

“Garrett—”

“A lot more space in the kitchen,” he interrupted brusquely.

“Yes.”

They made their way back through the house, each half leading, half following the other to a sunlit kitchen that managed to remind him of both her cottage and the apartment she had kept in Kirkwall.

“Cozy.”

The afternoon crept in through eyelet curtains, still and golden, shadows dark as whisky across Planascene oak and white marble. It suited her, but then, Essa’s kitchens always had.

“Thank you.” She smiled. “The cabinets and the marble are original to the house. I’m rather fond of them, but I’m not too sure about the blue on the walls.”

“Yellow?” he asked, nudging her toward the sink and turning on the water with the hand not holding hers.

She settled against the front of the sink, feet apart to make room for his, back to a window full of herbs and looking out into a large back yard just as crowded with green. She had found a place for her in the city after all. He would have to remember to gloat to Bethany.

“Yeah, I think so. There’s good light in here for it, especially in the morning.”

She reached for the closest cabinet, pulled out a white first aid kit. The contents were listed on the front in his sister’s careful penmanship.

“Beth says I’m too old for elfroot and vet wrap.” She clunked the box to the counter, fumbled one-handed to open it. “I’m not going to bleed out you know.”

Essa wiggled the fingers of her injured hand at him, but he didn’t let go. Her breath fell warm against the side of his face.

“I know.” He could taste peppermint tea in the air that brushed his lips. Garrett waited for her to find the tweezers and pass them over.

“You still have your old table?”

Her smile shaded soft and secret as she stared toward the long planks of reclaimed barn wood. He remembered how proud she and Fin had been when it was finished. Remembered, more vaguely, bleeding out on top of it.

“Lots of memories there,” she admitted. “Didn’t seem right to leave it behind.”

Essa snickered suddenly. “And I couldn’t see Cullen and Cari sharing breakfast on it.”

There was genuine humor in her eyes, no regret to speak of, and Garrett envied her a life without remorse. He had too much of his own, and he was tired of carrying it.

“You’re still hotter than a Kirkwall summer,” he grumbled, stepping back just enough that he couldn’t feel the full warmth of her against his skin.

“It isn’t hot yet,” she replied, lips quirking, pause long enough that he wondered if she was flirting with him. “Give it another month.”

“It’s hot enough now.” Complaining about the heat of a Kirkwall summer was safe, commonplace. Ambiguous innuendo with Essa was neither of those things. “You’ve really been happy?”

She grinned, popped him lightly on the shoulder with her other hand. “You think I’m prone to suffering?”

Garrett chuckled. “No.” No one who enjoyed suffering fought as hard as she did. He held up the tweezers. “These clean?”

“Clean enough. I’m just going to heal my hand when you’re done.” She sighed, fingers trembling slightly in his grasp. “Hurry up, Hawke, you’re making me edgy.”

It was a foolish thing to admit to him and they both knew it. Five years ago, she wouldn’t have been so honest. Five years ago, he would have made her pay for the admission. He began to carefully dig for broken porcelain.

“What about you?” Essa asked voice turning to winter. “Aside from Anders breaking your heart, have you been happy?”

“Who says Anders broke my heart?”

He pulled a thin sliver of rose from her palm, then leaned forward, crowding them both to drop it into the sink behind her. Essa scowled at him and he took too long to step back. He thought about kissing her, not for the first time since he left her in Kirkwall.

“You don’t give up on the people you love, Garrett.” She put her knee against his shin and pushed him back another half step.

“I don’t,” he agreed. “But people change.”

Sometimes people wanted so badly to be someone else that they threw everyone they loved away. He didn’t know much, but Garrett knew there wasn’t any reason to stay with someone who made you hate yourself.

“You don’t seem that different to me.”

“You either,” he said, pulling out another splinter of ceramic. “I thought you wanted to be.”

“So did I.” She stared down at their hands. “Beth was wrong about there being two Essas.”

Garrett bit back helpless laughter. “I told her so regularly.” He pressed his fingers to her flesh, spread bloody tissue to either side of a particularly nasty fragment. “This one’s in deep. May hurt a little.”

“I haven’t been shot in a while,” Essa retorted drolly. “But I think I can handle—“

Her breath hissed out and he smirked at her, capturing the last piece with a quick, deft motion.

“There. All done.” He knew that he needed to let her go. “Heal away.”

Essa glared up at him. “You’re standing too close.”

“Am I?” He knew he was. Couldn’t quite find the apology everyone seemed to want from him just for being, but then, Essa never had.

“Yes.” She tried to pull her hand from his; the attempt was weak. “How long for you and Anders?”

“About a year and a half after I found him.”

“What?” He felt the familiar call of her temper to her magic and held on. A cool balm flowed into her hand, teased up through his greedy fingers.

“You’ve changed a little,” he commented.

“I have.” Pride was clear in her voice. “No more out of control fire. If I want something to burn it burns, otherwise...not so much.”

She shrugged.

“Maker’s breath, Trevelyan, that just makes me want to poke at you.”

She laughed then, a full throated glory that tipped her head back into the sunlight and settled warm and deep in his chest.

“You’re a challenge I’ll always welcome.” She shook her head. “But you’ll notice I haven’t left you to go burn down Varric’s manor, so…I’m thinking I might be able to resist you.”

There was that. “It’s my fault Varric didn’t tell you. I…” He cursed himself for a fool, but forged ahead with his confession when her scowl became something darker, more discerning. “I didn’t want things to be awkward at Beth and Fin’s wedding.”

“Garrett, you ass. Things would not have been awkward.”

“Not for you maybe.” Even now, he was two foolish breaths from kissing her.  “Essa—“

“Why did you come back?” she asked.

“Kirkwall’s home.” And he had been gone too long.

Her magic tapered off and Garrett swiped away old blood with his thumb, stared at new skin, shiny and pale beneath his rough touch.

“But if you and Anders…” She let the sentence fall, picked up the next with a nervous glance at his face and then away. “Why did you stay away?”

“Because.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to…”

He wanted to hit something, he wanted to pace away in restless fury, but he wanted even more to continue standing there, holding her hand in his.

“You were happy,” he said finally.

“I’m still happy,” Essa told him.

“I know, and Maker’s breath, Es, I’m glad you are, but…have you any idea what it's like seeing you so happy in a life we could have built together?"

*

“Dammit, Garrett.”

Essa jerked her hand away and shoved past him, stomping across the kitchen and outside with a slam of the screen door. The backyard was cool, a haven of drooping oak limbs and emerald shadows. Bees hummed through a garden that needed work and rain. Essa had been waiting for an extra pair of hands around the office so that she would have time enough for the first.

“You decide suddenly to start sharing feelings,” she fumed, feeling anything but peaceful. “And _that’s_ what you start with?”

She didn’t bother looking to see if he was following her. Of course he was. He had been with her since the first time she punched him in his smart mouth, would be with her one way or another until the final bell. She had, until that morning, been fairly pleasantly resigned to that fact. She carried ghosts and memories happily most days, too often marveling at how fortunate she had been to live and love as fiercely as she had. To stand on the other side with an unflappable heart.

“In my defense,” Garrett bit out, catching up to her in the darker shade of the carriage house. “Today’s an off day for me.”

“Ha!” Essa huffed. Their reflections waited in dark windows, time stolen by gentle light, chance drifting like clouds on the inconstant surface of old leaded glass . “You can thank your storyteller for that!”

She spun back to confront him, so quickly that she slipped beneath his guard, nose brushing his chest. She caught a wiff of weapon oil and cedar before Garrett caught her elbows, held her too close and too far away at the same time. He wore the years as easily as she did. Silver was scattered amid his disheveled hair with less generosity than the laughter that crinkled the corners of his eyes. His shirt was a quarter unbuttoned over a white singlet, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his collarbone. The roguish grin that spread across his face when he caught her staring was so perfectly him that Essa couldn’t decide if she should kiss him or punch him. She sighed and closed her eyes against charisma unrepentant and undiminished.

His hands were too welcome on her skin.

“Today’s an off day for both of us.” Essa opened her eyes, glared up at him mulishly.  “Let me go, Garrett.”

“Make me.”

A sunbeam pierced the tree canopy, broke over his shoulder in dusty brilliance. Essa squinted against the onslaught. “What?”

“Did I stutter?” he asked.

Her nostrils flared at the start of a breath that Essa knew was not going to be calming enough.

“I was giving you the benefit of the doubt,” she retorted, hands flexing into heating fists. The blood dried on her right hand flaked away, fluttered toward the grass on a limp breeze. “Do not mistake my composure for complacency.”

She never would again. Already she had run through so many emotions she was near exhausted. She took another slow inhale, turned the rush of her magic to something productive and let frost collect in thick fronds on the windows behind her. It would melt soon in the summer heat, run down into the window boxes to refresh white petunias.

“Do you want the job or not?” she demanded.

This time he was the one caught flat-footed. “What?”

“The. Job.” She tried to fold her arms at her waist and managed only to drag herself closer to him. “Pay’s not bad, but the hours are shit. You’ll probably get to hit someone once a week, _if_ I don’t kill you in the first three days. You get your own office. Comes with room and board that I guess you won’t need.”

She nodded toward the door at her back. “There’s a small gym that you’re welcome to use. Not as big as Ricky’s but the equipment’s better.”

“Slow down, woman.” And then he shook her, shocking both of them into silence. “I’m—“

Essa gaped at him, was comforted only slightly to see the same slack-jawed expression on his face before he regrouped.

“You know what?” Garrett decided. “I am not sorry. Half an hour ago I thought you were married and living happily ever after by the sea. I came back to Kirkwall with plans to settle in and do some good, watch my sister and her husband fill the estate with children as pretty as me. I figured I’d see you, figured it might hurt because I’m a selfish son of a bitch and always have been. But I would have gotten over it, because you were happy. And now—“

His hold on her arms tightened and Essa stomped down on the inside of his left foot. She raised one smug brow when he yelped and let her go, a glower of betrayal on his face.

“I’ll give you the one because I sympathize,” she grated. By the Mabari! She had never been shaken in her life. Had promised pain to both Garrett and Cullen on more than one occasion if they ever became so bold. “But so help me, if you _ever_ shake me again, I will injure you.”

He grinned at her. “Wouldn’t blame you.”

“Well, thanks for that,” she chuckled, forgiveness already chasing away her ire.

“But it would be worth it.”

Essa groaned. “What in the Void are we doing, Garrett?” She reached up to rub her face with one cold hand. “Shouldn’t you be bandying about with some dame half your age? Tall, cool blonde, daddy issues? Shoe collection that would make me jealous?”

He eyed her curiously. “Shouldn’t you roaming the shore barefoot, sun in your hair, about to grace the world with a little Rutherford?”

“Why are you so hung up on babies?” she shouted, stalking forward only to realize she didn’t have anywhere to go. “I don’t want any!”

“Well neither do I!” he hollered back.

“Good!” She was waving her hands at him now, caught on the small stoop of the carriage house with nowhere to pace but closer to him. “And while we’re at it, I’ve never wanted to be that kind of mrs, so if you have this weird fantasy of me in an apron and pearls, you need to take your addled brain back to wherever you’ve been for the past five years!”

And there it was, she thought, as her voice broke in echoes against the deepening gloom.  Every irrational grudge she held against the both of them. He was kind enough to let it go. She wasn’t fool enough to think the reprieve anything but temporary.

“Depends, I guess.” Garrett pursed his lips in thought. “You wearin’ anything else with this apron and pearls?”

“I—“ Essa scowled at him. “You!”

“Yes. Me,” he drawled, as if oblivious to all the ways she was considering visiting harm upon his body. Garrett winked at her. She retorted with another stomp on his foot. This one gentler. “You may be happy…but I think maybe you’ve been a little bored.”

“Only boring people get bored.” Essa rolled her eyes. “Maker, your ego hasn’t deflated in all this time.”

“It’s only gotten worse without you around.” He pulled her into his arms, slow enough that she could stop him, deliberately enough that she couldn’t question his desire. “I want the job.”

“Garrett…”

“Is this the part where you tell me why we don’t work?”

“It might be.”

“I’m willing to let you take your own bullets,” he countered. “Mostly. We’ll have to negotiate on wounds that might actually kill one of us, you finally being the healer and all. Think we can find a compromise there?”

Oh, dear sweet Mabari, the man was serious.

“Maybe?” Essa’s breath left her in rush. “You going to be okay with my having my own personal templar? Someone I can trust to put a bullet in my skull if I go all possessed mage?”

Garrett frowned. “You and Rutherford still that close?”

“We are.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, toyed idly with the ends of his hair. “Always will be.”

He caught her gaze as his hands splayed wide across her sides.

“I suppose I could let him put you down if you turned into a raging abomination.”

Essa gasped and flung herself back over the band of his arms in an overly dramatic swoon.

“Not,” Garrett added stubbornly. “That I believe that’s ever going to happen.”

He dragged her up, one hand cradling the back of her neck as she continued to loll theatrically in his embrace. “I feel like I’m the one doing all the bending here.”

“You are,” she realized, straightening. “I can try not to take too many risks, but we both know…”

“We do.”

Essa sighed. “Alright, then.”

She groaned loudly. “I’ll wear the stupid apron.” She sighed again.“ _And_ the pearls. But you have to buy me a strand. I only have the ones Cullen gave me and that’s—“

He pinched her ass, hard enough that her taunt faltered into an indignant squeal.

“You’re still a wretched creature, Trevelyan.” He pinched her again for good measure. “I’m going to have to kiss you now.”

“Are you?” Essa grinned. “I mean, you’ve only had me sweaty in your arms for the past five minutes. How long does it take you to work up to these things nowadays?”

He glared at down at her. “Do you want me to let you go?” he demanded, feigned doing just that until she grabbed hold of him.

Essa waited for him to still, then placed one palm over his heart, felt the steady beat sync with her own.

“No,” she said, quietly, deliberately, without any levity to obscure. “No.”

Garrett nodded, once, a jerk of his chin and serious glint in his eyes gone as quickly as it had come.

“Then one thing at a time. I’m going to kiss you, you _wretched_ ,” he repeated for emphasis. “Annoying woman. And then I’m going to go back to Varric’s and rough him up a bit, if you’d like to join me.”

“I would.” She pulled herself closer to him, until they were crushed together shoulders to knees and hot summer skin. “You’ve gotten downright gabby, Hawke. I’m not sure I appreciate the change.”

“Liar.” He rubbed his beard against her cheek, dodged her advances when she surrendered to whatever madness they had always been and turned her lips toward him seeking.

“In the morning I’ll be here early—but don’t get used to that,” he amended hastily when she raised one skeptical brow. “I don’t stay up drinking like I used to, getting old or some shit, but I’m not ever going to be on your crazy farm hours.”

She made a feint for his lips, waited for him to dodge again, and turned at the last second to breathe a kiss against his earlobe. Garrett’s breath stalled somewhere between a sigh and a groan.

“Fine.” Essa wondered just how much she was agreeing to.

“I’m going to make you coffee.” His promise was cool against the side of her neck, lips close enough to torment. “But breakfast is on you.”

“Is this a part of the whole apron thing? Because I gotta tell you, I’m not big on being a plate.”

“I don’t lick my plates.” He ran his tongue in a bold sweep over her pulse, sent it crashing madly.

“Garrett!” Essa swore at him, hands alternating between open palmed slaps more sound than fury and clutching helplessly at his shoulders.  “Andraste’s knickers, I’d forgotten how much I hate you.”

His lips brushed her chin as he traced the bottom curve of her smile with his nose. “I’ll remind you.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“As often as you need.” He dropped a kiss on one cheek then the other. “Probably more.”

“If we’re lucky,” Essa agreed, watched astonishment spin like stars in the depths of his gaze.

“We make on our own luck, me and you.” Garrett said roughly. “Are you game?”

She kissed him in answer, a little harder maybe than was warranted given what seemed to be the orchestrated romance of the day, but she had expected him to continue his teasing, was unprepared when he yielded, lips soft, one hand holding her neck like glass, the other clenching hard enough in the damp fabric of her shirt that she heard the cotton protest.

“We still have to talk about--”

“We will.” He kissed her, long enough, and thoroughly enough that she saw beyond the rose gilding of memory, found again the keen edge of what they once were to one another. What they might yet be. “After I’ve tried at least once to distract you with sex.”

“I dooon’t know….” Essa pretended to consider, was still pretending to consider when he threw her over his shoulder.

“Not funny, you barbarian!”

“Says my favorite feral mage.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from a beautiful song from 1945 titled the same. 
> 
> Well, there you have it. I would very much love to hear your thoughts!


	4. Lucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two months after Garrett returns to Kirkwall. His heartbreak isn’t fresh. Years old at this point really, but that doesn’t mean he’s learned that he is worthy of love. I think we all struggle with this to some degree. Essa has had her share, but she’s not going to have those worries here. NSFW ish? I mean, these two do a lot of talking during sexy times. 
> 
> Fluff, smut, a little angst. Some healing.

The month of Solace waned, bright-white days of summer slanting toward autumn’s gold.  Garrett Hawke had been back in Kirkwall for two months, and in so many ways it was as if he had never left. The weekends were still for stirring up trouble, Tuesday nights were for knocking a few back with his friends at  _the Hanged Man_ , and if the city was cleaner than it had been now that Varric was viscount well…Lowtown hadn’t yet gotten that memo. There was still plenty of work for a good gun and a better pair of eyes.  _Jennys Investigations_ was busier than Essa could handle on her own, and thank the Maker for that.

She liked bossing him around. He would have been lying to say he wasn’t enjoying it as well. Right now she was perched on the edge of the big steel desk they shared, pencil skirt short, legs long and brazenly bare in defiance of summer’s last gasp of heat. She had slipped out of her shoes not a moment ago, and her toes were curling against the hardwood floor as she ran over an old cold case. Something had caught her attention down at the docks this morning and she was picking at the facts like the frayed threads of an old sweater. Her grey eyes were narrowed on the manila file in her hands, and one foot was tapping, fingers drumming on the heavy cardstock as her clever mind chased a hundred details four years old or more.

Garrett was thinking very seriously about pushing her back on the desk and wrapping her legs around his head.

“Are you even listening?” Essa asked, not bothering to look up.

“Mostly.” Garrett grinned.

He was kicked back in her desk chair, balancing precariously on two wheeled legs, one foot was mostly on the floor and he had a short of bourbon in one hand. The work day was done, not that they kept strict hours, but they had already put in at least nine.  They were both down to their shirt sleeves and he was fidgeting with the ends of his tie, considering.

“No,” Essa said, smile flirting with her lips as she kicked him lightly, nearly costing him his balance.  “Still very much not on my list.”

He brought all four legs of the chair back down with clunk, barely kept from spilling his drink as the wheels shot him backward.

“You don’t always know what I’m thinking, Trevelyan.”

He had only ever asked once. They had been younger and still learning. Not that they weren’t still learning now. He understood now, with all that she had been through, that restraints were a big no. He wasn’t particularly fond of physical bonds himself especially when will and intention could work just as well and to greater effect.

“We never did discuss how you feel about blindfolds.”

Essa snorted, and reached to take his glass. Her nose wrinkled at the bourbon, but she took a sip anyway and left a lipstick smudge over the lingering print of his lips.

“No we didn’t.” She followed that sip with a rough gulp, cheeks tinging pink beneath the abuse or something more, Garrett couldn’t quite tell. He was going to have to chase that particular rabbit later. “You do know that I’ll keep my eyes closed if you ask me too.”

He smiled. “I do.”  

Just as he knew she would lie, motionless and twitching beneath his attentions, for damn near hours. The woman was willpower personified, and now that they weren’t constantly trying to distract themselves and each other from a relationship that was obviously more than sex…that will was unbreakable. A quiet word, more entreaty than command, and she was his.

“Stop looking at me like that.” Her lips twitched, but her gaze was soft, unfocused on the report before her.

“Like what?”

She was standing close enough that he hardly had to move to reach for her. Garrett ran his knuckles down the outside of her closest knee.  She startled at the light touch, dropping her file and sloshing bourbon over her hand.

“Dammit, Hawke.”

She was grinning even as she swore at him, scowl utterly ruined by the quick curve of her lips.  Garrett rolled the chair forward, crowding her legs between him and the desk as he took the glass from her hand.

“Work day is over,” he reminded her, bringing her fingers to his mouth, sipping the spilt bourbon from her knuckles. “You were very adamant about minimum overtime when you hired me.”

“I was.”

She picked up the file with her toes, concentrating more on standing on one foot to complete the maneuver than on what he was doing with his lips. Garrett scraped his teeth over her thumb, nipped sharply at her palm. This time she was the one to overbalance.  He may have helped just a little on toppling her into his lap.

“I’m also your boss,” she gritted between her teeth, landing hard against him.

“Nope.” Garrett’s grin was impenitent. “I’m off the clock.”

“We don’t have a clock,” Essa laughed, wrapping both arms around his neck and pressing closer. “And you wouldn’t keep a timecard anyway.”

“Do  _you_?”  He dodged her kiss, put his lips instead on the curve of her shoulder, and took a slow breath of salt sweet skin just before he bit down, hard enough to leave her gasping.

“Dammit, Hawke!” But there was a moan behind his name this time. “You know I had to. For both of us.”

They were both bad about working too many hours, especially when they were working together. They hadn’t yet told their friends and family that they were…well whatever it is there were…and work was the best of bad excuses for spending time together.

He began working the tails of her sleeveless shirt from the waistband of her skirt. “So we’re done for the day?”

Garrett started on the tiny row of faux pearl buttons down the center of her blouse. The shell was thin; he could trace the shape of her nipples through it and the thinner bra beneath it.

“I have a papercut on my toe,” Essa griped, turning toward him, shifting her legs until she was all but straddling him, her position impeded by her skirt. “And I’m covered in bourbon.”

“Well, you’re not,” he replied, returning to her hand, sucking her first finger into his mouth and licking the last of the bourbon from her skin. Garrett released her finger with a pop. “But I do like the sound of that.”

He spread the sides of her shirt open, left the soft blue linen to frame sun-dark skin and bright white Antivan lace. For a woman who preferred to be naked, she was serious about her lingerie. He had never thought he cared much for it one way or another–naked was always better–but undressing Essa had always been like unwrapping a present. Garrett dipped his fingers in the glass on the desk behind her, reached to trace a line of bourbon down her sternum.

“Garrett Hawke!”  

The screech was worth it. He leaned forward, caught the bourbon with his tongue before it could trail close enough to reach her bra.

“By the Mabari,” Essa sighed, fond and exasperated as she stilled beneath his touch. “You’re so lucky I put up with you.”

Garrett smiled against her, licked that same smoky sweet line back up toward her throat, pressed his tongue against the rapid pound of her pulse. Her eyes had gone dark with lust, but she was smiling as he pulled away just enough to meet her gaze, to hold that exasperated glare. Maker’s breath, it seemed she always had a smile for him these days.  It was a fucking miracle is what it was. Not luck. He had luck aplenty, good and bad in such equal measure he couldn’t tell how useful it was, but never here. Never with love.  He had always been too much himself or not nearly enough.

And yet, here she was.

“Yes, I am,” he agreed simply, honestly. She had to know he understood that. She had to know how damn thankful he was to have her in his life again.

“Garrett..”

Her smile was falling when he took her lips, and he realized even as she kissed him back that the wretched woman had seen too much.

~*~

Oh, no, Essa thought. The shadows were growing in Garrett’s eyes just before he kissed her with lips too soft, too gentle for the playful moments before. There was a fine tremble in his hands, one that she almost missed when he splayed his fingers wide and cool across her back, touch firm enough to steady them both as he deepened the kiss, determined to steal the breath she had already lost.

Nope. That wouldn’t do at all. Two months, it had taken two months but there they were, scars that they both carried, finally laid bare to the summer afternoon and there was no way—no fucking way—he was going to kiss her senseless enough to forget about them. Essa pulled away, breath uneven, hands unsteady as she pushed at his chest trying to put enough distance between them that she wouldn’t lose her resolve.

Which she had to admit, was too blighted easy these days. She liked having him close. Having him home. Liked having him with her in the field, in her office, and in her bed. Liked having him just as he was now, sprawled in her old desk chair, shirt half unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up to elbows, mischief deepening the dimples that hid behind his beard. There was laughter in his eyes and love–she knew it even if they hadn’t said it yet–but there was something else there too. Something she couldn’t let stand.

“Leave it,” Garrett whispered, beard a delicious scrape across her jaw as he kissed his way from her lips to her ear.

He caught her earlobe with his teeth, nipped sharp enough to sting before sucking away the tiny pain. Essa groaned, tempted. Andraste’s ass, the man was always tempting her.

Bastard knew she had seen then.

“I won’t.”

She knew some of what he carried, believed him when he said that those wounds were healed. She carried the same ones. A lifetime of being told she was too much or not enough. She still had her mother’s eyes, and Cari was still their mother’s image in so many ways. A bad day and the right lighting and she could all but hear Miranda Trevelyan speak from her mirror.  _“You’re lucky we put up with you, Ester.”_

She should have known he had heard those words too, and damned if she wouldn’t like to kill the ones who had said them. She had said them often herself, though she had never meant them the same way. Never would. But maybe he didn’t know that.

“I’m sorry,” Essa murmured, turning in his arms, twisting her body and her skirt until she was frustrated by the limitations of both. She kissed each of his cheeks, one after the other, lingering pecks that he flinched beneath. “I’m sorry.”

There were stages of healing, and there were always scars. Hers were pale, faded with time and the love of her friends and the family she had found. Garrett’s were still angry, raw. She needed to be closer to him. Needed to feel his heart beating against hers. Needed him to know every certainty.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

There was more than one meaning in that soft assurance. His hands were steadier now, cool. They skimmed up her spine, fingers just a little rough from so many years in fists. He was trying to tease again, turn the exchange back to sex. She understood that too. Sex with them was easy, but this…this was something they needed to clear up now, before whatever they were went any further.

Essa staggered to her feet, made quick work of button and zipper before dropping her skirt to the floor. She kicked the cotton broadcloth toward her shoes.

“You definitely have nothing to be sorry for,” he added with an appreciative leer.

She couldn’t quite stop her grin. “Shut up, Garrett.”

Essa straddled him, and he made an appreciative noise as she settled over him in nothing but her bra and panties, and the linen shirt he had gotten undone. He reached for the front of her shirt and she nearly let him push it from her shoulders before she caught them both.

“Huh-uh.” She swatted him. “Not that I’m not…enjoying…”

Garrett chuckled, hips lifting so that he rubbed against her brazenly.  Essa faltered, rallied.

“Your obvious….appreciation.”

Her hands were fists in the cotton of his shirt, but she wasn’t budging. He must have seen that in her face.

“You sound awfully serious for someone enjoying herself.”

“I am.”

“Which?” He smirked. “Serious or enjoying yourself?”

“Both.”

She wasn’t straddling him for the sex that she sorely wanted but for closeness. Essa had seen retreat in his eyes, and for all its rarity, she knew them both well enough to recognize it. He wasn’t hiding from her now, and he wasn’t getting away. No more “leave it”s or “it’ll keep”s.  Essa took his face in her hands, steadfastly ignoring every other part of his body that was trying to deter her from her course. She took a deep breath, leveled at him an unflinching stare.

“You know that’s bullshit, right?” she said, daring him to pretend to misunderstand.

“Essa…”

There was uncertainty in his brown eyes, and pain–too much pain–before he closed them. For a heartbeat she felt bad for trapping him, but while she was a not inconsiderable physical force, she also knew he could move her if he wanted to. Especially as they were, balanced precariously in a twenty year old office chair.

“That part about you being lucky,” she added just for good measure.

He was going to argue with her. She could see it in his face. He was going to respond with something self-deprecating but sweet, just a little teasing. Turn the charm up a couple notches and try to get out from the stark intimacy of the moment.  She had seen it before, and she had let it pass for both their sakes, but she didn’t have anything to lose but him now and that wasn’t how they were going to play this going forward.

“Bullshit,” she repeated, thumbs stroking gently over his cheeks.  He had to know, and if he didn’t, he was going to learn. “I mean yes, you’re lucky.  _I’m_ lucky. For more reasons than I can count right now.”

He cleared his throat and Essa shook her head, swept one thumb down to stop his protest against his lips. When he pressed a kiss to the pad of her thumb, she thought she might weep.

“But I don’t put up with you, Garrett Hawke. I…”

It was too soon yet. Too damned soon. Nine weeks. Nine weeks he had been back. She had loved him before he left Kirkwall, had loved him without ceasing in the years since, and by the Mabari, she wanted to give him that truth as well.

“I enjoy you,” she continued softly. “Not just for the amazing sex.”

She rocked against him, watched his lips lift toward a smile even as he hardened further.

“I  _want you around._  When you’re making me crazy. When you’re threatening my new bra with bourbon.”

“I wasn’t—“ He was nearly smiling in truth now, but his hands were too still at her waist. He held her carefully, as if afraid that one of them would break.

Not this time, she thought.

“I’m grateful for you,” Essa murmured, leaning forward to kiss his lips, slow, easy, more breath than touch. “So grateful for you. Every damn day. I do not ‘put up with you’, do you understand?”

“Essa—“

“Do you understand, Garrett?” She gave the words hard edges.

He sighed, palms pressing against her back again. “I do.”

“And do you believe me?” she asked, softer now, earnest, because she knew. She knew what it was to hear the words, but to feel them hollow against the weight of years and heartache.

He swallowed hard. “I believe you.”

She could tell that he wanted to.

“I’ll keep telling you,” Essa promised. She waited as he opened his eyes, waited for him to meet her gaze and hold. Steady. “Alright?”

His hands were tight at her waist now, fingers pressing firm to flesh, urging her closer. She let him pull her to his chest, reached out to catch the credenza behind the chair so that they wouldn’t tip. His heart beat hard and fast against her breast as he rubbed his cheek with hers, bussed a kiss to her temple.

“Alright.”


	5. Of Kissing Days Past and Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kissing Day falls about six weeks after Garrett returns to Kirkwall. They're both trying to act like nothing is going on, because 1. sneaking around is fun 2. They're not entirely certain they're ready to have everyone in their business again. Essa, Bull, and the Chargers are carving pumpkins for Bethany's annual Kissing Day bash and well, there's plenty of junk talk, also some surprising revelations.
> 
> From a Kissing Day Prompt over on tumblr.

“Andraste’s sweet mabari…” The wind was crisp, fire-tinged and crackling with autumn. The sun was just rising over Kirkwall and the cool air carried little of the stench from Lowtown. It was far,  _far_  too fine a morning for Essa’s breathless horror. She leaned weakly against the Iron Bull’s side, one hand pressed to her heart, the other near trembling around her cup of coffee. “Do you see…?”

Essa closed her eyes, hoping the scene before her would reorganize itself into some sort of logical sense when she opened them again. Bull slipped an arm around her waist, held her companionably if without much hope of comfort.

He let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of pumpkins, boss.”

“Where do you want ‘em, dollface?”

The delivery man—Pete something or other, Essa wasn’t opening her eyes quite yet to read the logo on the door of his rusted out farm truck—seemed utterly without mercy. He wasn’t giving her any time to process the magnitude of what lay before her.

“Are you certain this is the Hawke-Larkson order?” she asked, still too stunned to give him the grief he deserved for that drawling epithet.

She took a deep breath, opened her eyes to stare through the wooden side rails of the truck. Pete ran dull green eyes over the top page on his clipboard, pulled a short stub of yellow pencil down from the curve of one ear.

“Signed it herself,” he said, circling two impossibly large numbers and Bethany Hawke’s bold, illegible signature before showing them to her, lips twitching with unrestrained glee. “Unblemished, perfectly white, delivered no later than seven am today.”

He ticked each item off against a chipped front tooth, held the pencil out to her.

“You gotta sign for ‘em.”

Essa shook her head. “Not yet I don’t.” Maker, preserve her. She was going to kill Bethany. “Not until I’ve made certain they are in fact unblemished and perfectly white.”

Pete scowled at her, but Essa was too busy staring into the back of the truck to give him much notice. “Bull?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“There’s no way we’re getting through all of these pumpkins.” She pulled herself upright, straightened her sweater with a sigh. “There must be six dozen.”

“Five dozen,” Pete corrected. “Not counting the two crates of little ones in the front.”

He jerked his thumb back toward the cab of the truck.

“Little ones?” Essa asked in a small voice.

“Yep. Not much bigger than a fist.” He closed his fingers tight, then glanced at the Iron Bull. “Well, yours and mine anyway.”

Essa nodded in absent agreement. “What are the little ones for?”

“Centerpieces,” Pete said with a shrug. “These Hightown ladies like to nestle them in amid candles and flowers and such.” He smirked. “You got those coming too don’t you?”

“We do.” She couldn’t quite keep the whimper from her voice. “Bull?”

“Yeah, boss?” He was fighting—admirably she thought—to hold back his laughter.  

“Call for backup,” Essa sighed in defeat.

“You’re going to owe him,” Bull warned.

She was, and Andraste, help her, she had no one to blame but herself.

“I should have known not to bet against him over his own sister.” Not that she planned on being such a graceful loser when Garrett called in his due. Of course, these days even when she lost, she won. “By the mabari.” Essa shook her head in wonder. “What sane woman needs this many pumpkins?”

“This is gonna be some party,” Bull replied.

~*~

_Some party_ was a bit of an understatement if the deliveries to the estate were any indication. Except for Cari and Bethany’s weddings, Essa couldn’t remember ever seeing so many for one private event. The first round of florists showed up the same day as the pumpkins, bringing dried arrangements of bright autumn leaves and wreaths of bay and grape vine. The cut flowers wouldn’t arrive until late the next day, vases spelled to preserve freshness throughout the weekend. Or so Bethany cheerfully informed a groaning Essa when she checked in with them later that morning.

“This,” Essa said, waving one pumpkin smeared hand at the Chargers sprawled across Bethany and Fin’s back patio,  “is not what I signed on for.”

They had been working for hours now, gutting pumpkins and tracing designs on the outside from the half dozen templates Essa had brought with her. While their help was greatly appreciated, they were far more enthusiastic about the impending festivities than Essa was. They had been singing bawdy Kissing Day songs all morning.

She wasn’t sure it was worth the trade.

“I hate this holiday,” Essa muttered.

She was elbow deep inside a large white pumpkin; Grim had already taken a picture for posterity. Sera didn’t know it yet, but she had a new nickname.

“You don’t really,” Bull said, putting down his knife and shaking an impressive handful of pumpkin guts to the newspaper beneath him.

A round of agreement bubbled up from the rest of the Chargers, various damning offenses to prove Bull’s argument, among which was the current project which had come about only because the year before Essa had carved some white pumpkins with a lacy design for Bethany’s Kissing Day brunch. She had done it to cheer her friend up. It was the second Kissing Day that Garrett hadn’t come back to Kirkwall and Essa and Fin had known that his absence was weighing on her.

“My love for Bethany eclipses my hatred of this wretched holiday.” She glared up at Krem who was still staring slack-jawed at the daunting number of pumpkins Essa was going to have to carve–or supervise the carving of–in the next two days.  “Don’t tell her I said that.”

Krem laughed softly. “I’m pretty sure she knows.”

“And that she’s an extortionist,” Dalish added, tapping a pattern of perforations on the surface of her pumpkin with a hammer and ice pick.

“Right on both counts,” Essa sighed.  “I guess I can’t blame her for this year being a bigger deal than last year.”

Bull made a noncommittal grunt, but they all knew why Bethany was going over the top with her annual Kissing Day celebration. Her brother had left Kirkwall five years before, returning only for weddings, births, and major holidays, but the last three years he had stayed away completely sending gifts and letters and apologies in his stead. Bethany claimed she understood, and maybe she did, but there was no doubt that this year she was happy to have Garrett home where he belonged.

“What about you, boss?” Bull asked innocently enough that Essa missed his insinuation.

“What about me?” She pulled out a handful of pumpkin seeds and cold wet squish, nose wrinkling in a grimace. She was going to smell like pumpkin for a month.

“You doing anything special for Kissing Day this year?”

His lips twitched slightly, and this time Essa had to pretend she didn’t catch his meaning. She shot him a glare when she didn’t think anyone else was looking.

“ _I_ …” Essa picked up a heavy knife, weighing it in one hand with what she could only hope was subtle menace; Bull smirked. “…am carving pumpkins for the next two days,” Essa continued, “and trying to figure out how I’m going to pay you and your crew for helping me.”

There were some suggestions from the Chargers. One surprisingly bawdy one from Rocky. Essa winged a brow at him, surprised to find her cheeks heating. She had been contemplating a similar Kissing Day scenario with another partner.  Not that she was telling any of them that.

“Well, it  _is_ Kissing Day,” Rocky shrugged. “And rumor has you made some questionable choices last year. Figured I’d toss my hat in just in case you wanted to make some more.”

“Bull!” Essa’s face was flaming now. She snapped a glare across the patio, and flung a handful of pumpkin guts in retaliation for his obvious betrayal.

“Hey!” Bull barely dodged in time, landing heavily on one elbow. He righted himself with a groan and held up both hands, the indignation in his eye somewhat contradicted by the broad smirk on his lips. “I didn’t tell ‘em.”

“Ha!” Skinner leapt to her feet, a wicked smile curving her lips, eyes dancing bright with satifaction. “I told you. Pay up.”

Essa watched in horror as Grim, Rocky, and Dalish all began fishing in their pockets for whatever they owed.

“I thought you had more sense,” Dalish sighed.

“Skinner?” Essa could only gape.

“If you didn’t want us all knowing,” Skinner said dryly, wiggling her fingers at their friends. “You should have gone out the back of the club instead of stumbling half-dressed right out the front door the next morning.”

“ _You snuck out_?” Bull demanded. He looked genuinely offended. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the walk of shame type, boss.”

He glowered at her and Essa rolled her eyes.

“I’m not.” She flicked another handful of seeds at him in annoyance. “But you were snoring too loud for me to sleep and you’re a fucking bed hog. My head was killing me. It was go home or kill you.”

There was sympathetic laughter and Essa was helpless to do anything but join in. It wasn’t as if she was exactly ashamed of having spent one slightly drunken night with one of her best friends. She had learned—too late in some cases—that sex wasn’t something she could indulge in without a strong emotional connection to her partner, but that didn’t mean she had to be in love. She and Bull were close, and she had been celibate long enough at that point that the comfort of a good friend had been exactly what she needed.

“You scurried out of there pretty fast,” Skinner mused, tapping her knife against her teeth. “Chief must not have done quite right by you if you were walking that well.”

She might have imagined it, but Essa thought Bull’s grey complexion paled. It had been a onetime thing, but neither of them had ever had cause to regret it until today. Bull clutched his chest as if wounded and Essa snickered.

“Well you know…” she was moving before she finished the taunt. “He’s not as young as he used to be.”

Essa squealed as a spectacular handful of pumpkin gore arced across the bright morning. She rolled fast—though not quite fast enough, her boots were spattered—and scrambled to her feet as Bull reached into his pumpkin for another round of ammunition.

“And,” she continued mercilessly, darting behind a laughing and protesting Krem on the off chance that Bull wouldn’t malign his dear second in command, “we had consumed a  _lot_ of Kissing Day spirits.”

Essa lifted one finger, was about to make a drooping motion when Bull roared in outrage. Krem darted sideways, grin wide and open over a braying guffaw as he left Essa at the mercy of Bull’s charge.

“You impugn my honor, woman!”

He hit her gently, all things considered, but Essa still would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her in his arms. Bull’s hands spanned her waist easily, and he tossed her high enough into the air that she lost her breath. When she landed safely in his arms, Essa clung to him with pumpkin covered hands and cursed him soundly.

“Don’t do it, boss.”

Her heart was still pounding in her throat. She hadn’t quite come up with proper retribution, but now she smiled.

“Don’t do what?”

Her grin turned a little mean as she smeared goo across his head. The Chargers cheered her on, laughter echoing like thunder off of Bethany’s garden walls.

“You gonna tell him?” Bull pitched the question beneath the din, shrugged easily with one shoulder as he held her with the other arm. “I just wanna know, so I know.”

“Tell who–?”

He stopped her with a look. She and Garrett weren’t ready to tell anyone that they were back together. Truth be told, they were still being cautious with one another, and they were enjoying sneaking around and pretending that they were “just old friends” and “coworkers.” But Essa should have known Bull knew. There wasn’t enough sneaking in the world to get by him.

“Anyone else know?” she asked with a sigh.

“Probably Varric.” Bull eased her feet to the ground. “Not our story to tell though.”

Essa snorted. “As if that’s ever stopped Varric.”

She stood for a moment, hands on the rolled up sleeves of his shirt.

“As for you and me…” She jerked her chin toward their laughing friends. “They all know, and I’m not really the type to keep secrets. He won’t care,” she added. In case Bull was uncharacteristically worried. 

“Didn’t figure he would, or you wouldn’t be with him.”

Truth there. Essa couldn’t abide jealousy. She stretched up on tip toes, pulled Bull down to place a kiss on his forehead. “You’re a mess by the way.”

Bull patted her on top of the head with handful of seeds and pumpkin string.

“So are you.”


	6. A Little Steam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the last chapter I had a LOT of requests for just what happened between Bull and Essa the year before. This is pure smut, for no reason other than the fact that I will always love Bull and Essa together and there is certainly a world or six where these two became a ship (one I'm not writing). Their friendship, however, will always be incredibly important to me, and I think that at least in the aus, they would definitely have the kind of friendship that allowed for healthy, consensual sex when they weren't with others.
> 
> This sorta drunken Kissing Day tryst falls during the three and half years after Cullen and Essa broke up and about 9-10 months before Garrett returned to Kirkwall. Essa and the Iron Bull, 2.5k words. NSFW. I would have put it in chronological order, but I really feel it should be read AFTER the silliness of the last chapter. :)

“Boss…”

“I’ve told you already, Bull, you keep calling me ‘boss’ and none of this is happening.”

Essa was sprawled naked across his bed, skin still tanned from a summer at the shore glowing faintly against black sheets. She hadn’t stopped giggling for the last half hour and her breasts—some of the finest he had ever seen—were shaking with glorious laughter. He hadn’t expected for her to be a playful lover, but he supposed he should have. She smiled when she fought. Stood to reason she’d laugh when she fucked.  

Bull’d had worse partners, and at this rate it wouldn’t matter how good the actual sex was, she’d be in his top twenty. He hadn’t laughed so hard or felt so light in years.

“I think we’re blurring the lines of consent enough as it is,” she continued sagely, waving her empty wine glass between the two of them before reaching back to set it on the nightstand. He didn’t bother hiding his appreciation for the arch of her body, and she preened at little extra when she caught him watching. “Without adding unequal power dynamics to this whole mess.”

“Unequal…?” Bull chuckled, slapped her lightly on the flaring curve of one hip. There weren’t many who could match him in force of personality, but Essa Trevelyan was definitely one of them. “We were sober when we got started.”

He scratched lightly down the outside of her thigh, watched as faint welts rose up behind his fingers. Essa’s giggles bubbled into a moan. He already knew she liked a little intensity, how much and how close to pain he didn’t yet know, but she was honest in her reactions, it wouldn’t take long to find out.

“And I’ll stop calling you ‘boss’ when you stop calling me ‘chief’.”

Bull placed an openmouthed kiss to the curve behind her knee watched as the glimmer of merriment in her eyes gave way to rising lust. He had never thought they’d end up here, but now that they were it seemed inevitable. Fucking wasn’t really that different from going a few rounds in the ring and Essa had been running hotter than usual lately. They had shut the nightclub doors an hour ago behind the last of a Kissing Day afterparty before indulging in a well-deserved whiskey or two in the quiet that followed. Tonight, they had both needed to let off a little steam. They were candid enough with one another that the offer of a round on the mats had flowed with surprising ease to few rounds in the sheets.

Bull wasn’t complaining; he would make damn sure she didn’t have anything to complain about either.

Essa lifted up on her elbows, stared down her body to meet his gaze. He didn’t blame her, it was a damn fine view. She was hard muscle beneath ample curves, a retired fighter who couldn’t stay out of the gym but wasn’t giving up pasta.  He liked that he didn’t have to be too careful with her. She had no few bruises on her body as it was, some had come from a sparring match with Krem earlier in the week.  Bull had already asked about leaving marks on her during sex and she’d cheekily assured him that if she didn’t like where his mouth was he would know it.

He believed her. And wasn’t that a gift in itself?

“You’re going to make this weird aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes, reached up to shove back the wild tumble of her dark hair. “You’ve got this look…”

She brushed gentle fingers beside his eye.

“You were ogling me earlier,” he reminded her, turning into that knowing touch.

He nibbled a kiss to her knuckles, nuzzled into her hand to scrape his teeth against her palm. The breathy sigh of her exhale teased spiced whiskey past his cheek.

“I was.”

Essa was observant, always had been. She saw more than most people were comfortable with, didn’t mind calling them on their shit. He liked that about her too. Needed more like her in his life. When she looked at him, he felt more than a little naked.

The good kind.

“Probably got that same fond look in my eyes when I did it too,” she groused.

“You did.”

He turned back to her leg and bit down on the inside of her calf, gently at first, then harder as breath and sarcasm stuttered behind her teeth.

“By the mabari,” Essa gasped. “Do that again.”

Bull placed a kiss over the blunt marks his teeth had left behind then sucked lightly at her skin, watching her face for signs of pleasure or ticklishness. She was quick to both and it seemed the same touch could elicit either. He liked the sound of her laughter–it rang bright and brash through his usually quiet apartment–but it wasn’t what he was after just now.

“Later,” he promised.

He ran his palms up the insides of her thighs, spread her legs slowly as he knelt between them. She squirmed a little, eyes falling shut, but she wasn’t hiding. Essa reached for him, nails rough against his trousers. He was still wearing most of his tuxedo, knew exactly the effect an undone tie and a partially unbuttoned shirt had on her. She had told him more than once that she had a type; he didn’t mind playing to her fantasies tonight.

“Are you going to hit me if I tell you how hot you look like this?”

Essa didn’t like being told she was beautiful. She loved her body, was more comfortable in her skin than anyone else Bull knew, but her features were too sharp for such soft platitudes and she bore them particular disdain.

“Nah.” Her lips curved in a soft smile. “I knew you were an ass man.” She shimmied at him, hips moving between his waiting palms. “So I believe you.”

He caught that ass in both hands when she giggled, gripped her just shy of too hard until she moaned. Her hands clutched at his legs, breath coming short and fast. Bull dug his thumbs into her hipbones and Essa arched up from the bed with a coarse shout.

“Good?” he asked.

She patted his knee with limp fingers and he wondered how close to climax that simple touch had been for her.

“More than good,” she whispered breathlessly. “Fuck, Bull.”

“We’ll get to that too if you want.”

He lifted her slowly, waited for her eyes to flash open. Her gaze found his through the late night gloom and he watched her pulse beat hard in the slender curve of her throat.

“Bull?”

The first touch of nerves skittered across the smoke of her eyes. He didn’t look away as he lowered his head. When his lips brushed the curls above her sex she startled.

“Essa.” Bull waited, hands stroking her hips gently as he watched her thoughts chase each other across her face. She was considering if she still wanted what he had offered, and the last thing he wanted to do was rush her.

“It’s been a while for me,” she said finally, not quite looking at him.

“I know.” He could smell her arousal and her skin was all but twitching beneath his palms. He doubted it would take much to send her over, but they weren’t going anywhere she didn’t want to go. “We go slow as you want, boss. Stop when you want.” He lowered her back to the bed and she made a little sound of distress. “Or we can stop right here.”

“No.” Essa shook her head quickly, smiled faintly when he smirked. “Well, I mean…if you want.”

“I want—“ Bull settled into a more comfortable position on the bed, eased his bum leg out in front of him and rubbed his knee. “–to see how many times I can make you scream.”

Her blush was a thing of beauty. He could count on one hand the number of times he had seen her flush bright and rose, and never had he been in a position to watch that blush move down her entire body. She covered her face with one hand.

“Alright.”

Oh, he was going to tease her about that blush later, he thought. She would think something was wrong if he didn’t.

“Now…” Bull began conversationally. He bent forward, dropped a kiss to her stomach.  “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Do you really?” Her lips twitched and she licked her lips.

He ran two knuckles over damp curls. Essa flinched.

“I might.” He made a sound of wordless praise when her hips lifted, seeking more of his touch. ”You’re too short to hook your legs over my horns.”

“I didn’t—“

“You didn’t, huh?”He stroked the seam of her lips with the tip of one finger, parted them carefully with another. “Fuck, you’re wet.”

Essa groaned and he stroked her lightly, letting her body get used to being touched by another after so long.

“Bull…”

Her hands clenched on his legs and she writhed against him, hips moving in a slow, steady rhythm. Despite the blush still lingering on her cheeks, there was nothing bashful about Essa. He circled her clit with a cautious touch and she bucked against his hand.

“Maybe a foot or an ankle,” he continued quietly. “I mean, you might be a kicker.”

“Dammit, Bull.” Essa’s hands wrapped around his wrist, palms soft and warm as heath fire as she moved his fingers from her clit, lower, hips lifting to guide his finger inside her. “Oh, shit…Another. Please.” Her nails dug into his skin and she spread her legs wider.  “Don’t stop talking to me,” she ordered softly.

He thrust into her with a low groan, watched the sound travel through her body on a shuddering exhale.  

“Voice kink, huh?”

Essa curled up into the curve of his body, muscles clenching tight around his fingers as she let go of his wrist to take his face in her hands. She was straddling his lap now, his hand trapped between them.  

“Maybe.”

He grinned and she kissed him hard, all teeth and tongue, small breathless sounds as he fucked her with his fingers. Bull cradled the back of her neck with his other hand, urged her back so that he could reach her breasts with his mouth. She hung suspended between his hands, her weight resting on their legs. The muscles in her thighs flexed powerfully as she rode him and for a moment Bull simply watched her.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he said, stealing her protest with a rough kiss. “You might not believe anyone else, but you’d better believe I mean it.”

She kissed him back, something gentle this time, almost sweet. “I believe you.”

Her orgasm was close. A fine tremble started in her knees, and the steady rhythm they had found between them was faltering on her end. Bull ran his thumb over the pulse at her throat, shifted his other hand enough to do the same to her clit. She shuddered in his arms, head falling back in abandon, chest heaving.

“Fuck.”

Her hands were on her breasts now, fingers pinching hard at her nipples.

“Look at you,” Bull murmured, smiling as she trembled beneath his words.

There was so much he wanted to do with her tonight, but he had to get her through this orgasm first. It was going to take her hard, she was probably going to cry and she’d be pissed about that.

“Bull…” His name was wound tight with need. He leaned over her left breast, took her nipple into his mouth right along with her clenching fingers. “Oh.” Essa’s breath exploded in a surprised rush. “Yes. Fuck, yes.”

She was so wet now, she was dripping.  Her concentration shattered. She had all but stopped moving against his hands, but her hips were restless and erratic. Bull worked her harder, until the only sounds in the room were her desperate sighs and the soft slick sounds of her body.

“Please, please.”

He circled her clit with the pad of his thumb, pressed hard against her pounding pulse with the other.

“Essa.” He pitched the command low, let a little more gravel into his voice than usual.  “Look at me.”

She obeyed instantly—she might be pissed about that later too, he wasn’t sure yet—her eyes were heavy-lidded and nearly black with pleasure. Bull watched blue spark against the thin rim of smoke, felt the distant draw of her magic rise and then fall as her climax racked through her with a shout.

“Easy.” There were tears in her eyes, and she was still shuddering around his fingers as he laid her back on the bed. “I’ve got you, boss.”

“Dammit, bull.”

She slapped at him with heavy, useless hands, managed to hit nothing but air anyway as her arms flopped back to the mattress. He eased his fingers from her and she made a sound that both revel and regret.

“You alright?” She was swearing at him. He figured it could go either way.

Essa chuckled, reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “You give me shit for crying and I’m going to beat your ass.” She dropped her hand over her heart. “Later.”

Bull laughed. “I wouldn’t.”

“Good.” She lay panting for a moment, lips turned up in a contented smile, but then she surprised him.

Again.

“Thank you.” Essa turned suddenly, cuddled close into the curve of his body. She pulled his arm down over her side and kissed the tips of his still damp fingers.

“Don’t thank me until I’m through with you,” he said gruffly.

“And don’t think,” Essa retorted, voice lazy with post-coital splendor, “that just because I followed one command, you can boss me around.” She thumped him over the heart with her forehead. “Chief.”

“Ha.” Bull rolled to his back, dragging her with him until she lay sprawled across his chest. “I knew you’d be pissed about that.”

“It was a good move.” She stretched her legs, threw one across his waist. “Now, you were saying.”

“I was…”

Fuck if he knew what he had been saying. Essa reached down, tapped the tip of one horn expectantly. Bull was certain he cracked a few ribs laughing.

“I was saying…you can’t hang from them like a gym bar.” He tsked at her. “I know you’ve been thinking about it.”

“I would never.” She gaped in mock outrage, reached for the buttons of his dress shirt.

“The angle will be all wrong.” Bull’s lips twitched and he leaned up brushed a kiss against her smile, pulled back just before her mouth opened beneath his. “Unless you’re after getting that ass—“

“Bull!” Essa’s face flushed bright with indignation. She fell back on the bed, laughter booming toward the ceiling as she launched a foot at his face. Bull caught her by the ankle, nibbled a tickling line along arch until she squealed.

“So that’s a ‘no’ then?”

“Maybe next year,” she snickered, trying to wrestle her foot away. “If you’re very good the rest of tonight and you haven’t whisked a certain—“

“Uh-huh.” He let go of her foot at the end of a spectacular tug, watched her eyes round wide when she nearly pitched off the bed. “You can tease me about him tomorrow.”


	7. Love Lines & Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted in three parts for 2016's Kissing Day Celebration on Tumblr. Posted here as one long chapter. (about 9.5k)
> 
> The first Kissing Day after Garrett's return to Kirkwall. This would be while he and Essa were still sneaking around and pretending that they were just old friends working together. Because you know...everyone believed that or something. 
> 
> Ensemble cast. Lots and lots of fluff and cameos. Unrepentant fluff. A Kissing Day ball. Fancy dress. Tuxedo. Garden mazes and outdoor smut. (NSFW at the end)

The Amell Estate in Kirkwall—now renamed the Hawke Family Estate as much to thumb noses at old ghosts as anyone else in Hightown who didn’t think the Hawkes belonged there—was turned out in grand style for Kissing Day. Thick green vines covered the towering brick walls surrounding the property, and in the summer they were sweet with white trumpet shaped flowers. Those leaves had turned with the seasons. They spread now in shades of gold and brown, thin red ribbons now woven among them, gleaming like love lines in the twinkle of a thousand golden faerie lights.

Night was falling as Garrett turned into the drive. His windows were down; the evening was cool enough for pleasure and warm enough for comfort. Roses climbed the open gates, red blossoms thick with scent, growing in such profusion, he could barely see the curling wrought iron behind them. His headlights bounced off of old-growth oaks, limbs dripping with springy grey moss and white lace lanterns. Already, there were countless cars parked on the west lawn and music filled filled the night. The song was old-fashioned, something sweeping and bright  piano just a little wild. Bethany had already given her welcome speech then.

She was going to kick his ass for being late.

He had taken his tux to work last night. To Essa’s, but they were still pretending they worked late on cases as often as they told everyone. Somewhere between here and there and here again, he had misplaced his bowtie. He had spent too long looking for the blighted thing before giving up and simply leaving the top button of his white dress shirt undone. It was a rakish look and it suited him. If Bethany gave him grief he was more than prepared to claim it deliberate than admit he couldn’t keep up with where half his clothes were anymore. He was supposed to be living here with Bethany and Fin and Ester. Little Garrett was on the way, or at least he had better be. Garrett was still miffed that they’d given Essa the firstborn. This one better be named after him.

They had snuck around all summer, feeling out each other and their actual attempt at a relationship. It was one thing to want, another to admit that they wanted, but something else entirely to merge their lives together. They spent more time laughing than fighting and, Andraste’s sweet ass, there was something to be said for stealing kisses–and more–behind their friends’ backs. Varric and Bull knew, of course, but the rest were oblivious, buying with almost insulting ease that Garrett and Essa were simply working together at her investigative firm.

Their first relationship–and he still wasn’t sure that was the right word for what they’d been–had been antagonistic. They had kept their feelings from themselves and each other. He still didn’t know if it had been too much honesty in the end or too little that broke them. Essa thought it was a bit of both. They had both stayed busted up over each other longer than they liked admitting. This time they were being honest from the start.

And the sex was unfuckingbelievable.

Somehow they were even more unapologetic than they had been, back when neither thought they owed the other anything. They knew each other, weren’t afraid to ask how their wants and likes had changed, enjoyed finding the ways they hadn’t. They were both more daring, better at not getting caught, but that only made them court danger with greater devotion. Garrett had never had so much fun.  

A party like this, he thought with a grin as he pulled his car into the shadow of an oak, might be one of the best nights of his life.

Damn if he didn’t miss her. In the past five years he thought he had gotten used to missing her, but this was different. This wasn’t the ache of loss or the knowledge of regret. This was a constant looking forward to seeing her, the anticipation of homecoming. Now they had only been apart for most of the day, and wasn’t that just as ridiculous as it sounded?

Essa had been carving pumpkins for most of the last two days. He saw them now, white lace designs casting patterns of firelight on the wide brick steps leading up to the house. She had been complaining for most of those two days, insisted he would be able to find her just by searching for the woman who smelled like pumpkin and flame.

He was getting tired of living back and forth between her place and his sister’s. And as much fun as it was, he was getting tired of sneaking around. Kissing Day was his favorite holiday and he was enough his father’s son that he wanted to have the woman he loved in his arms at least once tonight. He had–despite his missing bowtie–dressed to that end this evening. He had a red formal scarf draped around his neck, the silk his trademark red and only a shade darker than that most often associated with the holiday. The hand-knotted fringe flirted with the hem of his dinner jacket. There were red spinel cufflinks at his wrists, jewels shining blood bright in the low light, an early Kissing Day gift from Bethany this year, as well as his mask. He wasn’t quite sure why his sister had chosen to throw a masked ball, but he was game and she’d done a fine job picking his out. The frame was light, mounted on a black baton. When held to his face, it covered his forehead, eyes, and the bridge of his nose. This mask itself was a red and black scale, subtle horns peeking above his hairline.

She had been laughing when she gave it to him.

Essa, Garrett knew, would be all in black, not a speck of crimson invitation in sight. She claimed–loudly and often–to hate the day, but still, she loved the spectacle of Bethany’s increasingly dramatic parties. She would be wearing something sinful, all peekaboo drapes and curves, shoes just tall enough to make her a convenient height for dark corners.

Maker’s breath, he loved the woman. Too damn much.

“Have you told her?”

The singsong caught him off guard and Garrett startled. Cole smiled in gentle apology.

“I didn’t just appear,” he said, as if he still had to remind people. Nearly six years in Kirkwall, but Essa said sometimes folks still had trouble adjusting to his nature. “I was standing here when you walked up. Lost in her. Wanting, remembering. Dark tumbling hair. Clever mind, clever mouth. Laughter will always be the color of smoke.”

“Yes, well.”

The kid wasn’t wrong, and Cole nodded sagely in response to the unspoken admission before turning to stare toward the brightly lit windows of the house. The front doors were open wide, and music and light spilling lush and blue out into the press of the evening. Garrett had the feeling Cole was letting him regroup. He swallowed hard, was suddenly glad that his throat was unrestricted.

“I haven’t yet,” he admitted. Until that moment, he had wondered if he needed to. Surely she knew. “You’ll keep this under your hat?”

The young man was uncharacteristically bare headed, though he looked strangely comfortable in a navy suit that didn’t quite fit him.

“She knows,” Cole said, miming hiding something beneath an invisible hat. “But you should tell her.”

Garrett ran one hand through his hair, lifted his mask into place.

“I will.” The words held the weight of a vow and Cole accepted them just as solemnly.

“Good.” His grin flashed quick and sharp as a blade. “She’ll be mad if you do it tonight.”

She would, in fact, never let him hear the end of it. Garrett chuckled.

“Yes, she will.” He reached for Cole’s hand, shook it warmly as he stared in the windows trying to pick Essa out of the glittering crowd. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You wouldn’t tell me where she is, would you?”

There were so many suits and gowns, most in shades of black and red. Masks ran the gamut of sheer lace to elaborate Orlesian obscurities. Finding her tonight had promised to be half the fun, but Garrett found himself anxious to see her now.

“Uh-uh,” Cole tisked in a cheerful singsong. “That would be cheating.”

~*~

There were, praise the Mabari, no pumpkin guts in sight. Essa stood beside the backyard fountain—an overly grand sculpture of two dolphins currently spouting pink water toward the starlit sky—sipping Bethany’s signature Kissing Day cocktail from a crystal champagne flute and wishing desperately for a good short of whiskey. The night was perfect, just cool enough that the men weren’t sweating in their tuxedos and the ladies weren’t miserable in their heavily beaded gowns. A chilly breeze flirted through the gardens, nipped sharply enough to encourage warm embraces. Bethany had already made her yearly toast, wishing everyone a night of love so true it would carry them through the year.

Essa had only made one face, and only because Bethany was looking right at her and expecting it.

Bethany Hawke was radiant as always, one hand tucked in the crook of Fin’s arm, the other hand reaching down to hold Ester’s plump fingers. Bethany—eight months pregnant with twins—wore a floor length gown of red silk chiffon, strapless, with a sweetheart neckline trimmed in crystals. Ester was her mother writ small, elegant somehow for such a fearless toddler. She wore pink, poofy skirt cinched with a wide white sash. She had been the first of the evening to demand a dance with Essa. Fin, even in the tuxedo his wife had to strongarm him into each year, had never looked happier, and Essa would never stop thanking the Mabari, the Maker, anyone who was listening, for the joy he had found. There had been too little love in their childhoods. They had each other, fierce and forever, but this was more. This was better. Fin’s heart was too big to be wasted only on the likes of her, and if there was heart in all of Thedas that could match his, it was Bethany.

It was impossible to muster up her usual disdain for the holiday.

“Careful,” Bull said, moving up beside her. He took the sugary cinnamon drink from her hand, replaced it with a proper short of whiskey. “Your mask is slipping.”

Essa reached immediately for the elaborate headpiece, fingers ghosting over the pins and ribbons woven into her hair. The beaded monstrosity was heavy, but she’d loved it too much to choose something less cumbersome. Most of the weight was anchored in a knot at the nape of her neck, coiled tight with so much of her hair.

“Not that one.” Bull chuckled when she scowled at him. “I still can’t believe you wore red.”

He took advantage of her folly, leaned down to brush a kiss over her lips. Essa kissed him back with a smile.

“I didn’t want to be easily recognized,” she said, stepping back and lifting her drink in a little toast between them. “Thank you for this.”

“Any time, boss.” He reached out, tugged lightly on one of the long curls that spilled over her shoulder. “This is nice.”

Essa rolled her eyes. “You men. Always with the long hair.”

“You wouldn’t have grown it out if you didn’t like it,” he tugged harder and let go, watched with a smile as the curl bounced. “I’m thinking you’ve found it appeals to more than your vanity lately.”

She choked on her whiskey. “Shut up, Bull.”

He pounded her lightly on the back as she coughed and swore at him.

“Now get,” Essa bumped his hip with hers. “Go on before you give me away.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He had taken a single step away when she called him back.

“Bull?”

“Yeah, boss?”

He hadn’t bothered with a mask, his eyebrow lifted with the query. Essa reached up, tugged lightly on the black satin lapel of his white dinner jacket.

“One more for courage?”

He didn’t ask why she needed it, simply caught her around the waist and pulled her up on her toes. She clung to him with one hand, her whiskey with the other, and thanked the Maker for the gifts of her friends, for those who knew and loved and understood her.

“You need more, you come find me.” Bull kissed her soundly, lips firm with laughter and friendship.  “Don’t drown your nerves in whiskey.”

“I wouldn’t,” Essa promised, dropping a kiss on his cheek. She wasn’t as young or foolish as she’d once been. “Thanks, Bull.”

He winked at her as he started off again. “Anytime.”

Essa watched him make his way back toward the house, tossed back her whiskey with far less consideration than the expensive single-malt deserved. A fifty year something, smoky and enduring. Essa set the empty galass on the tray of passing waiter in order to resist the temptation of having it refilled at the bar. By the Mabari she was nervous. She didn’t know what had possessed her to make tonight a game between her and Garrett, only that everything usually was and wasn’t that the best part about them anyway? But now that she was here, wearing the most ridiculous dress she could imagine, Essa was nervous. She had promised him a prize if found her before midnight. He was thinking sex and he wasn’t wrong, but she had more planned for the evening than sneaking out into the garden.

Essa wasn’t a fan of Kissing Day, but she knew it was special to him and his family, and well, they were her family too now. So was he. It was past time they stopped hiding that from everyone, past time for him to stop pretending he lived with Bethany and Fin. They worked—and claimed to work—so many nights that he was hardly there anyway, and while some were actually for case work, most were spent curled up on the leather sofa in the den, or tangled up in Essa’s bed. Their bed, she thought fiercely. Andraste’s knickers, they’d gone together three weeks ago and picked out something big enough for them and the dogs to spend Sunday mornings together.

“He’s looking for you.”

Cole appeared just behind her, but Essa didn’t flinch. She also didn’t turn to face him. Had Cole wanted to be seen talking to her, he would have appeared beside her instead.

“He’s here?”

She had spent most of the morning finishing the last of the pumpkins and had gotten dressed upstairs in secret. Only Bull and Fin—whom she’d conscripted to help her with the tiny slick buttons she couldn’t manage—knew her costume. She didn’t know why Bethany had decided this year’s Sweethearts’ Ball would be a masque, but she had to admit she was having far more fun than she should have been.

“Arrived late,” Cole told her quietly. “Couldn’t find his tie.”

“He only just got here?”

She had been looking for Garrett since the first guests began arriving, but in a sea of masks and ubiquitous black tuxedos, she had yet to pick him out. She felt a little better now, knowing he wasn’t there.

“Should I tell you?” Cole asked in confusion.

“No,”  Essa muttered peering through the nearest window. “You know, I’m supposed to make this hard for him.”

The house was exceptionally lovely this year, lights low and golden. Candles flickered on every mantle, votives and strings of twinkling bulbs were mixed in with sprawling centerpieces of autumn leaves and deeply hued roses, purples and reds and burgundies gleaming like dark jewels. The air was scented with autumn fire and the last of the season’s apples, sweet cinnamon, vanilla, and spices in so many shades of brown. There were trays of food at every turn. The cookies Bethany and Garrett had baked the nights before were iced bright red and glittering with fine sugar, tucked in clear cellophane packages and tied with ribbons as favors for the guests.

“It is,” Cole offered cheerfully as Essa nearly pressed her nose to the window. “You too.”

“Are you laughing at me, Cole?”

Essa spotted Bethany at the entrance to the dining room. She and Fin were making the rounds among their guests. Ester was dancing with Cullen and Cari at the foot of the main stairs. Jesse, Cari and Cullen’s one year old daughter, was upstairs sleeping. The Rutherfords were elegant in red and white. Too classy for the cover of Varric’s last novel, though that couple had born a striking similarity. Cullen’s white tux was pristine, black tie and vest, the only red on him was the flush of happiness in his cheeks. Cari’s dress was heartstopping. Velvet deep as bloodroses, a wide bow at her throat. Her skirt fell in in heavy folds and Ester was clutching them with one hand, her other lifted to take the two fingers Cullen held down to her. He held Cari lightly with one arm and Essa wondered if she would ever be able to explain to Garrett what a relief it had been to find two hearts she cared for so deeply would care for each other in her stead.

“Sometime,” Cole said, placing one cool hand on her shoulder. “But not now.”

She waited for the usual litany, her thoughts laid bare and telling. She didn’t mind like most. She had never been much for secrets and those she’d once kept, she had cracked wide years ago.

“I think there are twice as many people as last year,” she commented absently, watching as Bethany sweep Fin to another group.

“Nearly,” Cole agreed. “You think you should mind.”

“Maybe a little,” Essa admitted.

The guest list grew every year—Bethany and Fin’s hearts was too big for it not to—but even with faces and names she didn’t know, Essa still felt the warmth of hearth and home amid the glitz and glamour.

“Are you going to tell me where he is?”

She didn’t actually want to know, but the demand made Cole grin. She spun to face him, reached up to catch him by the cheeks with both palms, knowing she couldn’t surprise him, knowing the affection was always welcome. Her fingers were loose, curling lightly against his jawline.

Cole smiled. “I was going to ask you,” he said, eyes pale and distant. “But I already knew.”

He leaned down, brushed his lips low on her cheek.

“The mask seems true,” he said, thoughtfully.

Essa tugged him down gently, pressed a kiss to his nose.

“Maybe it is.”

~*~

Where the fuck was Essa? The midnight deadline had been laughable, more jest than expectation, but now that crept steadily closer, he was beginning to worry. Garrett smiled and nodded and tried to remember the last part of the conversation he was currently trapped in. He probably should have said something back by now, but he was too busy searching the crowded floor for Essa. He had believed he would know her anywhere. 

A mask might obscure her face, but he knew her body. Knew every dip and curve and promise. He knew the restrained swagger in her hips when she wore fuck-me shoes, when she couldn’t quite stop exulting in taunting him. He knew how those same hips rolled loose when she was barefooted, easy grace in every step, toes curling lightly. He knew the head tilt of her curiosity, how she carried her shoulders when she was a breath from laughing. He knew how black lace worshiped the sun-kissed bronze of her skin, and how satin slithered from breast to waist to hip before falling to the floor. He knew the scars on her knuckles, knew that first stiff step when she’d been sitting too long and her leg was asleep. He thought he could pick her calves out of a lineup, and yet in the past three hours, he hadn’t caught a single glimpse of her.

Kissing Day was nearly over, though Garrett knew Bethany’s party would not start winding down for at least another hour. Still, it wouldn’t be the same, and nevermind that he would catch shit for a month over not finding her. He didn’t know how she had eluded him all night. Bethany’s party was more of a masque than a true costume ball and so there wasn’t nearly as much for her to hide in. Masks ranged from simple to elaborate but garb was still mostly formalwear. While he didn’t recognize everyone present, there weren’t many dressed in such away that he would have missed Essa.

And yet, somehow, he had.

Garrett had looked everywhere–subtly at first–letting Bethany introduce him around to her new friends and coworkers. There were also familiar faces he hadn’t seen since he got back–that he had no trouble recognizing, for the record–old friends from down at the gym, regulars from  _the Hanged Man._ It seemed Bethany had invited anyone who might want to see him and there were more than he would have expected. To his surprise, he was something of a local celebrity. Garrett hadn’t boxed in years, but people still remembered him. He blamed Varric as much as anyone else, and lost more time than he expected shaking hands and exchanging kisses and well wishes with his fans.

“You have the look of a man who doesn’t want to be here.”

Isabela slipped smoothly between him and an over-exuberant well-wisher, smiled prettily at the young man who was currently regaling Garrett with his old records. She made some flirtatious apology that seemed to only raise Garrett in the boy’s esteem before whisking Garrett across the dining room-turned-ballroom-for the night, and out onto the crowded dancefloor.

“Bela, my love.” Garrett kissed her in gratitude, kissed her again just because he could. Though he had seen her since returning to Kirkwall, he had missed her too. He would be making up to her for his prolonged absence for some time yet. “I can’t thank you enough for rescuing me.”

The music was slow, something grand and classical filled with piano and violin. Garrett pulled her into a waltz, hand high and proper on her back, watched her nose wrinkle in distaste before his fingers wandered over the lace back of her red dress to grope her properly.

“Better,” she chuckled, low and rich. “But I can tell your heart’s not in it. No pity flirting from you, alright?”

“Alright.” He had the grace to look properly abashed, but he didn’t grope her again. “I’m looking for Essa.”

“As if we don’t all know it,” Bela snorted, more sway in her step than was strictly required. “You’ve had nothing but longing in your eyes all night, sugar. That mask hasn’t hidden anything.”

“Well, I can’t say the same about hers,” he groused, stepping her through a corner box before spinning them into a graceful turn.  “I haven’t seen her anywhere.”

He was getting a trifle desperate. He hadn’t asked anyone since Cole, but this was Kissing Day dammit. Before the night was through, he would have kissed half of Kirkwall. The thought of not kissing her before midnight upset him more than it should have.

“I have,” he continued grumpily. “Only a quarter hour left. I must have counted forty lace masks–”

Isabela’s mask was the crimson version of what he had expected to find Essa hiding behind.

“A half dozen mabari masks.” He spun them again and Bela laughed, the sound rising warm and bright toward the low lights above them. “None of them were her. Six horses, Three griffons…”

He shook his head. “I don’t even know how many Grey Wardens.” Garrett sighed. “I’ve started eyeing the suits with suspicion, Bela.”

“As if Essa would willingly pass up an opportunity to dress up.”

She wouldn’t. The woman was all or nothing, happiest lounging on a beach naked or wearing the finest silk.

“Oh!” Bela’s fingers tightened in his; her breath left her in a startled burst. She  lifted one hand to crimson lips as if to hold back her surprise. “Oh, Garrett.”

He started to turn, to follow the line of her rounded gaze, but Isabela caught his chin in her hand, held him steady as they continued to dance. The floor was crowded, a crush of silk and satin and fine wool, bodies spinning like figures in a dozen music boxes.

“She’s in here?”

He released Bela’s hand, snapped his mask up into place, gaze darting quick and furtive over the crowded floor.

“Shut up,” he grumbled before she could tease him for his haste. He had hoped to find her outside, steal her away for a kiss in the garden, but even Garrett could admit there something to be said for the romance of spotting her first across the dancefloor.

“You’ve been looking for a smoldering brunette in black, haven’t you?” she was grinning now, and his pulse picked up in anticipation. “Dark, dramatic eyes, lace mask.”

“To start with,” he admitted.

They were Essa’s staples. He had a picture of her from the Winter Palace in his wallet, clipped from a newspaper years ago. She had been devastatingly powerful, even in Rutherford’s arms. Bethany had also sent him pictures from her parties over the years. In every single one Essa wore black, satin or lace or velvet.

“I am so glad,” Isabela said slowly, steps changing until she was leading his stumbling feet. “That I’m here to see this.”

She swept them into a turn, one hand spread wide at his hip, the other finally releasing his chin to settle on his arm. Garrett scanned the room as they spun, saw only a sea of elegant couples in black and red. And then–

“Merciful Andraste…”

He could feel Isabela’s laughter, but he didn’t hear her, couldn’t see anything past the center of the dance floor. He had not, in fact, missed Essa all night. He had caught a glimpse of her dancing with Krem earlier, but he had never suspected the vision in white to be her. The gown was too delicate for one thing, layers of gossamer shimmering and ethereal in the candlelight. For another, the mask was too ornate. If she had half her range of vision he would kiss Rutherford at midnight.

“Has she spotted us?” Garrett asked gruffly, following the music into a sweeping turn that took them away from the center of the floor.

Bela’s lips curved, slick and full, as he watched Essa dancing with Fin, tried and failed a dozen times to keep the besotted look from his face. Andraste, preserve him, she was laughing, face lifted beneath the weight of an elaborately beaded mask, silver and white, metal twisted and curving into a dragon’s face. Cole was right, laughter would always be the color of smoke.

“I don’t think so.” She did him the courtesy of not laughing in his face.

“That dress is–”

The tall windowed doors to the veranda were open to the night, flanked on either side by oversized topiaries of red and burgundy roses. A garland of autumn leaves and twinkling lights draped across the open arch, a kissing ball of roses and lace hanging from the middle. The music was winding down; Garrett eased them toward the doors, tucked them into the shadows behind one of the topiaries and the edge of the door.

“Ridiculous?” Isabela offered. “Stupid? Frivolous? Something only a Blessed Age damsel would wear?”

Garrett grinned. With each description he could hear Essa’s annoyance creeping into Bela’s voice.

“She loved it the moment she put it on,” Bela chuckled. “And complained every moment after that as she was paying for it.”

“She’d have been right about the damsel part…” he said, staring through the glass pane in front of him, trusting the candlelight reflecting off of the door to hide his face.

Her grey eyes were lined in silver, eyelids and lips dusted too, and the dress that poured down her body was silk and sin, layers of frosty white that fell like cobwebs and whispers to her feet from a heavily beaded collar. The gauze was mostly shapeless, nipped in low on her hips with a dropped waistband of the same icy beads, the layers above revealing  the shadows between her breasts and almost leaving too little to an imagination he didn’t need.

”…but those boots…”

There were splits in her skirts, two that he could see as Fin spun her in a too-quick turn. The dress rose up around her legs, revealed a pair of boots he knew for fact were new. Supple red leather, embossed with a faint shimmering pattern of scales clung to her calves, laced from peep toe to the bottom of her knees. Oh, they were new. If she’d had them for more than a few days, he was fairly certain he’d already have marks from their heels on his back.

Garrett swallowed hard, mouth suddenly dry.

“She’s looking for you,” Isabela warned, shooting him and the flower arrangement an amused and far too knowing glance. “She just checked out the clock above the mantle too. I think she’s worried.”

“Good.”

He’d only been searching for her all night. He had seen the woman in white, of course. A dress too delicate for Essa, a tease of scarlet at her throat, another at her feet. He had written the mask off as too heavy, and the heels much higher than her usual, straying into the impractical territory Essa disparaged when shopping for shoes. She had used his familiarity against him. Garrett frowned.

“Let her worry.”

“You don’t mean that.” Isabela took a step forward, mostly shielding him as Fin and Essa spun toward them.

Garrett smiled. “No, I don’t.” He ran one hand through his hair. “Dammit, Bela, she’s making fun of me with this right?”

Isabela’s laugh was rich and throaty and not a little mocking; Garrett fought the impulse to back deeper into the shadows.

“Of course she is.” She tossed him a smile over one shoulder. “But she’s making fun of herself too.”

She caught him by the arm and Garrett wondered if she intended to drag him across the floor.

“You mean to at least kiss her before the fireworks, don’t you?”

“At least,” he snarled, chuckling in chagrin when Isabela arched one brow and leered at him. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Liar.”

“That wasn’t all I meant.” Garrett took a deep breath, muttered nervously into the shadows at Isabela’s back. “I’m going to tell her–”

“There you are!”

Essa’s exclamation was just a little too loud as the music stopped and Garrett jolted guiltily, then chided himself for the indignity even as he melted back against the wall. .

“Look at you!” He could hear the smile in Bela’s voice as she stepped forward to greet Fin and Essa with kisses. “You look wonderful.”

“Thank you.” Essa’s smile was shy on the edges and Garrett wondered what could possibly have her so uncertain. She turned back toward the floor. “Bela, have you–?”

Garrett thought that perhaps she had been about to ask after him, but Isabela interrupted her.

“Fin, I think there is time for one more dance before you have to be Bethany’s arms for your midnight kiss.”

She held out one hand and Fin smiled.  

“I believe you’re right.” He kissed Essa on the cheek. “Don’t worry, he’ll find you before midnight.”

“Who’s worried?” Essa scowled. “It’s just a silly tradition.”

But Garrett watched her face fall towards bewilderment as the music started and Fin and Isabela moved back out onto the floor.

She turned with her back to the door and that was when Garrett knew for certain that she didn’t realize he was hiding behind it. He stared at the long, bare expanse of her back and tried to decide the best way to announce his presence.

“That’s my bowtie,” Garrett said inanely.

Essa startled. Between breaths, he saw her go for her gun, fingers curling toward her palms and her magic when she remembered she wasn’t wearing one–house rules.

“It is.” Her shoulders relaxed as she turned to face him, a bit of temper in her eyes that he’d not only snuck up on her, but that he’d gotten the drop on her too. He would pay for that later, hopefully in a way they could both enjoy.. “Are you really hiding behind the door?”

She stepped around the topiary, gazed up at him through the soft fall of rose-scented shadows. The hem of her skirts brushed the tops of his shoes and then she was there with him, crowding close, warm and smelling of lemon and smoke and yes, pumpkin.  She reached for him, nails painted blunt and silver as a gun barrel, palms landing flat on the lapels of his jacket.

“I was wondering.”The words were soft, they hitched breathless as he found her waist with incautious hands. “If I was going to have to come get you.”

His fingers touched warm bare skin and Garrett failed to hear whatever she had said next. .

“Garrett?” Her lips twitched, fighting mirth. Maker’s breath, he was going to hear about this forever.

“You might,” she conceded, and he realized he had spoken aloud.

Essa stepped closer, body pressing into the frame of his as she came up on her toes. Her lips brushed his jaw, then his ear.

“I missed you,” she whispered as if she confessed some delicious sin.

“I missed you.” There was no point in denying it.

“Good.”

Essa backed away so quickly that she stumbled. Garrett caught her arms, thumbs automatically sweeping over the racing pulse on the inside of her elbows as he held her steady. He could hear voices around them falling toward gossip and delighted scandal. Whatever secrets they’d been keeping, they were out now.  

“I–” 

She shook her head, cast the words in among so many others and began backing toward the doors. Her smile was fleeting but genuine. 

“We are not doing this here,” she decided.

“Doing what?”

She couldn’t possibly think there was any hope of maintaining their shoddy cover at this point. Not with her standing beneath a kissing ball and him staring at her like a lovelorn fool.

“Es?” He was going to kiss her–put the gossip and his nerves to rest and be done with it–but she pulled away, gathered her skirts in clumsy hands.

“Fifteen minutes to midnight, Hawke.” She grinned impishly. “How fast are you?”

~*~

Essa panicked. Which was to say that she almost threw herself at him–again–and kissed him in front of everyone, and while she didn’t think there was a whole lot left to anyone’s imagination after that stupidity behind the topiary, she really didn’t want to kiss him at Bethany’s Kissing Day Ball with Fin and Bela and an entire ballroom smirking at them.She had worn red for him, but she hadn’t quite been prepared for how he would look at her—in front of everyone!—as if she were everything in the world he hadn’t known he was looking for.

Damn sentimental Hawkes and their Void-taken holiday.

“Essa!”

She was halfway across the veranda when he called after her, could hear amusement and confusion in his voice as his steps fell lightly upon stone tiles. There was laughter mingling with the music behind him, good-natured and shared, but she didn’t want to share him right now. Essa cast a smiling glance over her shoulder, hoped he would mistake her nerves for mischief.

“How the fuck do you run in those heels?”

He nearly caught her as she stepped from flagstone to grass, those heels betraying her, sinking deeper into the lawn than the thicker continentals she usually wore. She wobbled, balance nearly ruined by the heavy mask on her face and the tangling layers of the dress that she was currently lamenting along with all of her other poor choices of the evening. She should have found him immediately, not spent the better part of the night nervous and edgy.

Game of discovery be damned.

“Carefully,” she gasped, wrenching her feet free before darting forward, managing the last few strides to the garden wall before he got close enough to make a grab for her arm.She grabbed the stone arch with both hands, hauled herself around the corner as his fingers grazed her skin. “Very carefully.”

She righted herself on a stepping stone, hands shaking as she adjusted her skirts. Garrett stepped into the entrance to the hedge maze and Essa couldn’t help a frightfully damsel-like gasp. Moonlight danced across his hair just right, glittered white on the silver at his temples. By the Mabari, he was something else. Even in the shadows she could see bewilderment in his dark eyes, but he was still smiling, lips lifted soft and sweet at the corners. He had an easy smile, and Maker knew he was quick to it, but that exact curve Essa had found he kept just for her.

“You look beautiful.”

They spoke together and grinned just the same. He didn’t call her on her choice of words, and she didn’t bust him on his. Neither one of them was beautiful. Too blunt, too much fighter in them both, but to each other…well maybe they were. Essa backed down the first row of the maze, unwilling to take her eyes off of him, not quite ready to surrender the moment stinging sharp in her throat. His skin still clung to a summer tan. She wanted to place her lips in the open collar of his white shirt, taste that stark contrast against her teeth. She had almost given in so many times this evening, ended the game before it had even begun simply because she missed him. Now she was annoyed at the hours they’d lost.

“You’re wearing red.”

He followed her unhurriedly now. Essa moved slowly enough to keep her footing, felt along the high stone wall behind her for the beginning of the hedge maze.

“For me.”

“Not much.” She shrugged, scowled at him when he smirked at her. “But you know…special holiday or something.”

“Or something,” Garrett agreed. “You stole my bowtie.”

“I did.” An impulse, the proof of which she had thought it would be a dead giveaway, and yet somehow it had taken him all night to find her.

“You left me all night to squirm didn’t you?” she demanded.

“I did not!” He looked so offended that she giggled. “It took me all blasted night to find you. And now you’re running from me?”

“I’m not.” It was her turn to be offended. “I…”

“You what?”

She backed around the first corner, took another immediate left into a small lover’s nook as adorned for the day as everything else on the Hawke estate.

“I…”Essa took a deep breath, stared at the stone-columned pergola festooned with twinkling lights and lace garland, the high-backed bench with red and white cushions. “Tell your sister this is just too fucking much.”

Garrett followed her, smirk broadening with the insufferable glee she loved so much. She waved one hand dismissively at the bench, stopped beside the first column and stared up at him through the twinkling lights.

“I wanted to ask you something, if you must know.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and stared past his shoulder as if it no longer mattered. “You know, before I had my way with you.”

“‘Had’?”

He had her now and they both knew it. Essa shrugged again, cursed herself silently for the nervous tick.

“Have,” she corrected. She put the column between them, peered around it with a smile. “I didn’t trust myself not to blurt it out at you out there.”

She had lost track of him when Fin asked her to dance, had spent most of the waltz fretting over what he might say when she asked him to move in with her.

“So you really did plan on having your way with me in the garden?” His brows disappeared behind the top of his mask, but Essa knew he was waggling them at her. Why he hadn’t dropped the damn thing already, she didn’t know. “I had hoped that would be my prize for finding you, but—”

“Damn right I did,” Essa interrupted. “I’ve only been wanting to get you at least partially out of this tux all night.”

She thumped him on the chest.

“We aren’t going to talk about your stupid dragon mask,” she added.

“Oh, we aren’t?” 

He twirled the baton, his grin playing peek-a-boo with the dragon’s hollow eyes. He was laughing when he reached for her again and Essa stepped toward him rather than away, let him pull her into his arms and tuck her close to his chest mindful of the spikes of her mask. 

“Yours is worse,” he murmured, leaning to one side so that he could press a kiss to her head. 

He tapped her ass with his mask and Essa snickered. “I know it.”

She heard the domino hit the ground, glanced up to see him smiling down at her, secrets behind familiar mischief. Essa slipped her arms around his waist and held on tight as Garrett’s hands trailed down her back, undemanding and unhurried. For a moment they stood beneath the stars and twinkle lights, listening to the distance swell of the music and breathing deeply of the sparkling night.

“Garrett?” His heart was beating so hard and fast she could feel through the layers of their clothes.

“I wanted to tell you something too,” he admitted.

There was no sign of tension in his voice or his hands. His fingertips still traveled slowly up her spine, raising a trail of gooseflesh in their wake. Essa shivered, leaned back enough to look up at him, trusting he could see her concern behind the makeup and the mask.

“But now that I have you…” He smiled, tipped her chin up and brushed a kiss low on her cheek. “It’ll keep.”

“Are you sure?”

She hadn’t noticed her hands tunneling beneath his jacket. The habit was so well-worn that it wasn’t until her fingers splayed wide across his lower back that she realized she had pulled his shirttails free from his tuxedo trousers. She didn’t know if she would ever get used to it, the jump from comfort and easy affection to breathless need. Countless touches shared, and they still caught fire between breaths.

Garrett pressed back slightly into her touch with a sigh. “Am I sure that I want your hands on me right now?” He placed a gentle kiss on her other cheek. “I’ll swear it by whatever you ask of me.”

Essa lifted her lips, parted them on a tremulous breath. He nuzzled her nose with his, but he didn’t kiss her.

“I’ve been thinking of only two things all night,” Garrett murmured a whisper from her lips.

“One of those had better be–”

He kissed her before she could finish, kissed her again before she could ask what the other was. From the teasing only seconds before Essa had expected something slow, as sweet as the look in his eyes, the soft brush of his hands along her spine. His lips took hers just shy of too hard and she gasped. Garrett sighed some wordless apology neither of them believed before she kissed him back with more teeth than lips, chasing his breath as recompense for what he was stealing from her.

“Essa.”

Her name was a rough rumble of want, sudden and stark. She shivered as his beard scraped her chin, the abrasion brighter in the cool night air. Essa bit down on his bottom lip, laved away the sting with the tip of her tongue as she shoved his scarf and jacket from his shoulders with a little grunt of annoyance when they didn’t immediately fall to the ground.

“You have to let go,” she grumbled, not wanting to suffer the momentary separation, but seeing not reasonable alternative for getting him out of his jacket.

Essa pushed at his sleeves again and Garrett groaned against her lips, the sound traveling down into her chest, sinking lower. He released her just long enough for the jacket to fall away and then his hands tangled high in the partial fall of her hair.

“How does this…?”

The question was warm and wet against the taut stretch of her throat and Essa mumbled instructions she could only hope were useful. The bodice of her dress fastened at the back of her neck, a  short row of tiny buttons she had cursed until Fin did them up with surprising grace. They parted easily beneath Garrett’s fingers.

“Not fair.”

The top of her dress was pinned between them. Garrett’s fingertips brushed the nape of her neck and he turned back to her mouth, sucked the complaint from her tongue with an impenitent grin as he crowded her farther back against cold stone. Essa whimpered, nails sinking into his back in retribution and encouragement.

“You’ve two perfectly good hands of your own,” he reminded her. He took the bowtie from her neck, placed a row of kisses to the skin he revealed.

“Yes, I do.”

His skin was warm beneath her palms and damned if she could form a coherent thought past her own need. Essa raked her nails lightly beneath the waistband of his trousers, listened to his breath catch as her thumbs swept roughly over his hipbones. She worked one button free, then the next, was debating how long they had and if she should take the time to get his shirt undone.

“Of course, we could just…wait.” He finally eased the bodice of her dress down, baring her breasts to the cool night air. “You did say you wanted to talk first.”

There was laughter in his voice and no small amount of well-deserved mockery as he bent to kiss place a wide, open-mouthed kiss above her heart.

“You should see your face.”

“Shut up.” She ran one fingernail along his zipper, the loud burr and steady touch silencing him for a breath. He was already hard, growing steadily harder beneath her attention. “I hate you, you know that?”

“I do.”

Essa eased his zipper down, ran her tongue over kiss-bruised lips as she touched him none too gently through his briefs. His eyes slipped shut. The sigh as he pressed into her hand was bone-deep and exultant.

“And I gotta tell you, Trevelyan. I really don’t mind.”

Essa snorted. “Well, I might. You seem to lack your usual finesse tonight, Hawke.”

His mouth was moving lower, hands rough on her skirts, fingers gathering the gauzy silk without his usual grace. She squeezed him once, chuckled softly when he fumbled and had to start again.

“Is there no end to this thing?”

He tugged on her skirts, frustration drawing his brows down sharply. Essa stroked him gently and he swore at her, hands clutching to fists against the silk before she took pity on both him and the dress.

“Here.”

She sighed, loud and long-suffering as she took his left hand, led him to the split in her skirt that ended at the top of her right thigh. When his fingers brushed bare skin a rush of heat and want left her gasping.

“Thank you,” Garrett said politely, smugly, gaze holding hers in a bold taunt.

“All better?” she asked just as evenly, as if she weren’t ready to crawl out of her skin and into his from the simple touch.

“You tell me.”

He bent his head over her breasts, caught one nipple between his lips as his palm smoothed up the outside of her thigh. Essa caught a moan against the back of her teeth. Better didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Garrett.”

He bit down gently, sucked at her hard enough that she grabbed him by the hair, clinging to him as her knees failed her utterly. She pulled his lips back to hers.

“Bench, please.”

He stopped teasing her, picked her up as if she weighed nothing. By the Mabari, she would give him shit later for carrying her bridal style, but right now her legs were trembling too much to hold her up.

It helped that he hadn’t stopped kissing her.

“Sit.”

His lips twitched against hers. She’d catch it for those monosyllabic orders too, she thought, but right now she didn’t care. Garrett sat back among the cushions with her, hands and lips moving over whatever bare skin he could find. His calluses scratched lightly over her hips and Essa watched as white silk pooled at his wrists, shimmering in the moonlight.

“Fuck.” The word was a hallowed and honeyed in the hollow of her throat. “You’re not wearing anything under this are you?”

“No.”

And thank the Maker for that. She hadn’t quite planned for her own impatience, but she was glad of her impulse now.  Garrett cupped her sex firmly, the gesture so sudden and greedy that Essa squeaked.

“What was that?” he asked.

There was laughter in his eyes. Essa scowled, watched that laughter brighten still more.

“You said you wanted to talk to me too,” she reminded him loftily, implying that they could always get back to their conversation if he was going to give her grief.

Essa lifted her chin to dodge a kiss. She was prouder than she should have been for rallying that single coherent sentence.

“I did.” Garrett stared up at her, lips swollen, eyes so dark they looked black in the moonlight. He stroked her gently, fingers sliding easily between wet lips. “I do.”

Essa rocked forward into his touch, bit back a hopelessly needy sound as his thumb moved in devastatingly familiar circles.

“But fuck if it can’t wait.”

“Oh, thank the Maker.” She reached between them, wrapped her fingers around the hard length of him, working him free of his briefs.

“Condom?”

“In the wallet my ass is currently sitting on,” Garrett said dryly.

They were laughing in their hurry, shuffling around like they weren’t two grown ass adults who’d done this countless times. Essa heard at least two seams rip as they shoved immediate impediments out of the way, and made short work of necessities. Garrett reached for her mask as she straddled him, body poised above that last moment of joining.

“Dammit, Essa, how do I get this off?”

Her smirk was immediate, her fingers slippery from her own arousal.They slipped twice–near clumsy with laughter and haste–as she guided him into her.

“Shut up. ” He thrust up as she sank down. Essa held back a moan with both hands. “If you’re the “this,” I’m fairly confident in my abilities. Now…”

His fingers were cool as they traced silver edges and Essa felt a momentary pang of regret. “The mask, Essa?”

“Too complicated to try in the dark,” she shrugged apologetically. “I thought…”

She had thought the mask might be half the fun. Essa frowned as his hands skimmed her back, the touch all at once too gentle, too reverent.

“You’re awfully serious, Garrett Hawke.”

She rocked her hips forward, determined to steal the sudden soberness from his eyes.

“I wanted to see your face,” he muttered as she moved over him. “But it’s dark anyway, and I don’t need to.”

He leaned up,brushed a kiss to the hollow of her throat. “I know you,” he whispered against her frantic pulse. “I know that your eyes are going to go from flint to mist and that you’re going to swear at me.”

“I’m going to swear at you more if you don’t shut up and fuck me.”

“Liar.”

They were always talking, even sex was rarely an exception. She would tell him later how much she loved that, but not now, not with this blighted holiday sugaring every earnest whisper in candied red. Not with her body begging for more from him, not with her heart beating his name.

“Maybe.”

Garrett took her face in his hands, thumbs feathering lightly over her cheeks as they moved together, pleasure rising and falling with curses and praises, moans and laughter.

“Es?” She realized that her eyes had fallen shut. She opened them now to find him staring up at her, smile soft and too damned sweet. “I lo—“

Essa slapped one hand over his mouth, braced the other on his shoulder, legs trembling on either side of his as her orgasm threatened and she fought her body still.

“Don’t you dare.”

“What?” The word was muffled against her fingers, but his cheeks were bright. He caught her hips with his hands, brought them together hard and slow before he reached between them, circled her clit with gentle, knowing fingers.

“Don’t you dare—“

She was glaring at him and–Andraste preserve her– _laughing_ as the orgasm tumbled over her in an effervescent wave, a bright cascade of twinkling light and warmth.

“I’m going to kill you.”

Essa fell forward against his chest, head held just enough from his shoulder that she didn’t spear him with sharp silver points. Her fingers clutched tight to his smile as his eyes danced.

“Kill you,” Essa repeated merrily.

She bent her lips to his neck, set her teeth to his pulse and worried sharply at his skin, listened for the hitch in his breath. She clenched around him as his hips picked up speed, stroking faster through already sensitive flesh, drawing out a dozen little aftershocks.

“You did not just tell me you love me on fucking Kissing Day,” she hissed, eyes filling with what were absolutely not tears.

She rocked back hard with his next thrust, watched his face as Garrett reached his own climax, breath coming sharp and fast through his nose. Despite the afterglow, Essa wanted to strangle him.

He mumbled something against her fingers, then licked her palm.

“Ew!” Essa made a face and released him, wiping her hand on his cheek. “Dammit, Hawke.”

“I didn’t quite,” he pointed out, chest still heaving slightly. “Not before you assaulted me.”

“I will never forgive you,” she threatened, knowing he would never believe her.

“But, yes,” he grinned at her. “I tried to.”

“Garrett–”

“I love you, Essa Trevelyan.” He caught her face in his hands again, held her gaze as she glowered at him. “I can’t believe I haven’t told you.”

She was  _not crying_.

“I suspected, you great ass.” She slumped forward, head on his shoulder, remorseless when her mask smacked him in the neck and chin. The metal frame bit into her face and she sighed before turning away from him. “I can’t believe you picked now to tell me.”

“Special day.” He moved the knot of her hair aside what little he could, placed a kiss on the nape of her neck. Essa pinched him. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I  _wanted_ –” She stressed the past tense. “To ask you to move in with me. You know, officially. I’m tired of sneaking around.”

Garrett’s laughter rose high over the small enclosure. “I think the secret’s out.”

“But I’ve changed my mind.” Essa yawned, snuggled as close as her costume would allow. “I hate you, and I never want to see you again.”

“Fair enough.” He placed a kiss on the back of her head. “You’re going to really hate me in a minute.” He shifted slightly beneath her. “We can’t stay like this.”

Essa groaned. “I’m not saying it back until tomorrow.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the first fireworks lit the sky overhead, bursts of silver and red, white and pink.

“It’s midnight,” Garrett said as the night exploded in light and thunder. “Tomorrow.”

“Dammit.” Essa sighed. “I love you.”

“What?!” He shouted over the noise. “I can’t hear you!”

“By the Mabari, Garrett Hawke!” She knew full well he had. “I love you!”


	8. The Pirate Queen and the Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So...after we all discovered the whole Essa and Bull Kissing Day past, Essa and Bull kept having a conversation in my head. Mostly because well, we know Essa wouldn't keep such a thing from Garrett and we also know he wouldn't care (in a negative way) one single bit. That conversation (recounted in the following note) then led to a bit of fluff and silliness from *Essa and Garrett's* past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a NSFW conversation that Essa and Bull have been having in my head since we found out they'd enjoyed a night together the year before Garrett returned to Kirkwall.]  
> Essa: I told Garrett about last Kissing Day, you can rest easy now.  
> The Iron Bull: Wasn't that worried.  
> Narrator: He was a little worried. She was one of his best friends. Wouldn't do to have the boyfriend jealous. He liked Garrett and Essa would threaten injury over such a slight.  
> The Iron Bull: How'd he take it?  
> Essa: (blushing immediately and furiously and suspiciously)  
> Bull: Boss?  
> Essa: Well...it was an interesting evening. (she grins)If you must know, we both talked about taking it.  
> The Iron Bull: (laughing uproariously) Both of you, huh?  
> Essa: Uh-huh. Once at the same time.  
> The Iron Bull: (still laughing) Alright, I'll bite. How'd that one work?  
> Essa: (glancing across the room to where Garrett is even then smirking widely at her) Our lips are good for more than the sarcastic quip you know. (another grin) and we do, despite antagonistic appearances, work very well together.  
> The Iron Bull: I may have heard that.  
> Essa: (blinking) What??  
> Narrator: (that's me, btw) WHAT???  
> The Iron Bull: You two ever want more than talking between you (winking broadly) you call me.  
> [End scene]
> 
> [I’m not sure how NSFW this is, but it’s about sexy stuff, references a past threesome, so I’m going to tag it as such. Mostly it’s humor though.1551 words. Essa x Garrett, Noir AU, their happily ever after…or at least until they wind up in jail for murder. Builds on this chat with the Iron Bull because well…once that was in my head I had a rather insistant explanation for why Bull would know they made such a great team.]

_The Pirate Queen’s Confessions_ was an anthology of not quite tongue-in-cheek erotica and erotic humor that Kirkwall’s viscount had never (publicly) admitted to writing. A cooperative literary endeavor penned under the name Elisabuea Merrick, the cover of the book featured a stunningly beautiful pirate, brown skin gleaming beneath the sun, wind blowing through the wild tumult of her flowing dark hair. She was wearing a pair of sinful over the knee boots, and not much else, a white sleeveless something or other and an underbust corset that only emphasized her already considerable charms. There were two men at her feet—both shirtless, well built, one fair and blonde, the other a shade browner than she—and they each had one arm wrapped around one of her glorious legs, expressions of rapt devotion on their upturned faces.

“Did you ever read this?” Garrett asked, waving the book at Essa.

He was half sitting, half lying on their bed, back to the headboard, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and he had his fingers placed very carefully—and very naughtily—between the pages. Essa was doing her best not to giggle.

“Not all of it.” She glanced up into bathroom mirror, met his gaze in the reflection through the open door. “You think that’s our culprit?”

They were still trying to figure out the reason for Bull’s comment and his invitation. He had been teasing, but only just, an offer for sex or laughter, probably both, but Essa knew the final call was theirs and no hard feelings either way.  

“It’s Bela’s only partially embellished memoirs,” Garrett grinned. “And there  _is_  a threesome.”

“So…?” 

Essa ran her brush through her hair one last time, cast the long heavy locks over her shoulder. She was still trying to decide if she wanted to cut it again, but she was too damned fond of his hands tangled in it.

“It’s called the Lovers.” Each of the stories was named for one of the major Arcana. “And that thing was published like two years ago. Well before we…” She rolled her eyes to indicate the perpetual madness that was the two of them together. Garrett had been in Denerim at the time of publishing, and if the future had been waiting for them, neither of them had known it. “I assumed it was about the Hero of Ferelden.” 

Bela’s favorite claim to fame that, and precisely why Essa had avoided it. While Leliana had accepted the book with grace and humor, Essa hadn’t wanted to know  _that_  much about her former boss. Garrett’s lips curved into a wide smirk. He opened the book, hands sliding in a slow caress over the pages.

“Oh, it’s not about the Hero of Ferelden.”

Still holding the book, he lifted his arms in invitation. He didn’t sound angry exactly, but there was something dangerous in his voice. Sick creature that she was, that edge still ran right down Essa’s spine. The wire framed glasses didn’t help, nor the intensity of his glare through the lenses. And Andraste’s ass, that silver at his temples was going to be the death of her one of these days.

Essa stared at the mabari print of his pajama pants and tried to think unsexy thoughts.

“And if I had known about this when I was in Denerim,” he continued, oblivious to her current ogling. “I’d have come back here to kick Varric’s ass.”

“Really?”

He had her attention now. They weren’t exactly ashamed of their sex lives. While there were certain emotional intimacies they didn’t share as entertaining anecdotes, they’d certainly never shied away from a good story about the physical.

And a lot of their antics made damn good stories.

“Really.”

Essa shrugged out of her bathrobe, padded into the bedroom and crawled up on the bed beside him. Garrett made the usual appreciative sounds when she tucked in against his side, cool and still a little damp from her bath. He bussed an absent and automatic kiss to her temple, but he remained exceptionally distracted.

“Alright,” Essa pressed a kiss to one pectoral, teeth a habitual scrape over the beat of his heart, and snuggled up so that she could see the pages.  “How bad is it then?”

It couldn’t be so terrible. Seven years had more than shadowed her memory, but Essa didn’t recall any of the three of them being dissatisfied with that night.

“The sex,” Garrett declared, thumbing through considerably more pages than Essa was expecting, “is fine.”

“Just fine?” she snickered.

“More than fine,” he chuckled, tipping his head down to catch her in a more serious kiss. “If you’d like, I’ll read you my favorite parts after we’ve killed our friends.”

“Oooh...” Essa ran one hand down his stomach, fingers dancing over flexing ridges, trailing through a line of enticing black hair. “Your favorite written parts? Or your favorite parts from that night?”

She had never had the nerve to ask. The entire encounter had been fueled with residual battle fury and nerves, adrenaline, and not enough booze to blame for their choices. The three of them had made it back to  _the Hanged Man_  after closing, all three of them bleeding, the reds and brass too close for comfort. The rest had been a bit of a blur.

A very nice blur.

“Both.” Garrett kissed her again, sweet and lingering. “Either.”

Essa sighed against his mouth. “But murder first?”

“Murder first.”

“Alright.” She took a fortifying breath, moved her hands to safer landscapes. “Let’s have it. Why am I killing—?”

“Helping me kill.”

“Why am I  _helping you kill_  two of your best friends?”

Garrett cleared his throat. “’ _The pirate queen had rarely experienced such a storm of sensual pleasure , the warrior and the rogue—_ “

“Hey, wait.” Essa scowled. “Which one of us is supposed to be the warrior?”

“That would be you.” Garrett huffed at the interruption.  “I’m the rogue. Hair the color of mink, eyes like smoke…”

Essa’s eyes narrowed. “And the warrior?”

“’Eyes like obsidian’, ‘hair a gleam of rainbow refracting onyx’.” He made a face. “But you do have lovely muscles.”

“They SWITCHED our coloring?!” Essa gasped, sitting up in outrage. She poked him in the chest. “And you’d better have lovely muscles too.”

“Oh, I do,” Garrett nodded. “Gave me your pretty scars and…” He ran one finger along her jawline, trailed scarred knuckles. “’…the most magnificent pair of breasts the pirate queen had ever seen beyond her own’.”

Essa’s eyes rounded so wide they actually hurt. “THEY SWITCHED OUR BODIES?!”

Garrett’s second nod was solemn, but there was mischief in his dark eyes.  He walked his fingers down the center her chest and abdomen, each step emphasizing his next words. “Down. To. The. Last. Inch.”

“No.” She covered her mouth with her hands.

“Yes.” He tugged her back down. “It gets worse.”

“Worse or better?” Essa was laughing so hard she could barely breathe, but he didn’t seem to share her merriment.

“Wait for it,” he said, settling her back against his chest and beginning again. “’ _The pirate queen had rarely experienced such a storm of sensual pleasure. For hours the warrior and the rogue feasted upon the lush bounty of her body, tireless, insatiable, plundering depths_ —“

“Maker’s breath!” He stopped, suddenly shaking his head in disbelief. “Do they ever stop with the pirate puns?”

“There is one on every page,” she cackled.  “At least every page that I read. It’s rather impressive.”

“That’s what she said,” Garrett murmured; Essa choked on a laugh. “No, really, page before this.”

“Right.” Essa took a deep breath, lips tight against her teeth with barely suppressed mirth. “Trying this again. Just pick up at ‘plundering depths’.” She wiggled her hips toward him. “You can plunder my depths next if you get through this in one go.”

The book hit her in the nose, unbalanced as he let go of one side. The smack that landed on her ass was a delicious sting.

“Hush, you.” Garrett glared at her with feigned severity and Essa bit her cheek, laughter silent but certainly shining in her eyes. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be any help.”

He righted the book in one hand. The rosy print of fingers was fire and want and she knew without looking that they were already fading. He kept his hand soft over the echoes, rubbing lightly until she arched back into his palm. 

“’… _plundering depths too oft ignored in the long weeks upon the sea, when_ the Siren’s Call  _languished far from a friendly port_.”

Essa made a little noise of distress low in her throat.

“Nuh-uh.” He pinched her lightly, the blunt curves of his nails raking slowly over increasingly needy fleshy. “This is the best part.”

His voice dropped low, smooth as bourbon of cold stones, and Essa knew they were in trouble. 

“ _The pirate queen had never seen two people so in concert as the rogue and her warrior. Every move was a dance, or a battle—there were moments when the queen wasn’t certain which—instinct and familiarity tangling together with the intricacy of years. Together they wrung from her every ecstasy, hooded gazes a furtive touch to one another’s at every shudder, every quake of the pirate queen’s trembling, pleasure-glutted body. When she lay dozing, sweat-slicked and beyond spent, the lovers turned to one another, hands yet greedy, lips filled with sighs only for each other._

_‘She could not remember the last time she beheld such a beautiful sight. The warrior held the rogue gently, broad hands clasping her graceful neck with surprising gentleness, thumbs sweet over her leaping pulse. His teeth were a flash of white against her ruddy skin, but there was surrender in the sharpened steel of his gaze. Promises unuttered in hers. The pirate queen had played the part of voyeur before, of course, to the enjoyment of herself and others, but this was something different. This was love, precious and rare and they moved together with brutal worship, careful of wounds both old and new. The Pirate Queen did not know how long the pair had been together, how many years of love and lust laid the foundation for her conquest that night, but she knew that what they had was somehow far more than the uncomplicated desires they claimed_.”

Essa sat up abruptly. 

“They said what?” She folded her arms beneath her breasts, stared down unseeing at the book in his hands. “You’re not making that up?”

Garrett shook his head, lips pursed. 

“We weren’t even in love then!” she shouted.

“I know.” 

They were both honest to faults in some ways, but this was one fallacy they’d committed to together long before they committed to each other. And they would take it to their pyres.

“There’s more.”

“I’m not certain I want to hear more,” Essa growled. Yes, murder. Then sex. She was already up and halfway across the room. “You think they’re still at  _the Hanged Man_  tonight?”

“We ride off into the sunset,” Garrett told her as Essa reached into their closet, grabbing clothes and throwing them to him. 

“We…” She threw a furious glance back over one shoulder. “Which one of us is riding my Makerdamn horse?”


	9. Settling Debts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Satinalia Season? check. Fluff? check. Garrett x Essa? check. Picking back up with that whole silly pearls and apron joke found in I Can’t Begin to Tell You? check. So here. Have 1600 words of homecoming fluff.

It wasn’t often that Kirkwall glittered, but a quiet night at Satinaliatime was one of those rare, precious occasions. The air was just cold enough to shine clear, and within the deep, distant blue of the evening countless stars sparkled, the dust of diamonds and wishes. Beneath his feet lay a fine layer of white, more frost and ice than snow, but it glimmered cold and bright just the same. Garrett crunched unhurriedly around Market Square, hands in his pockets, gaze sharp through fogging windows as he searched for yet another gift he knew he didn’t need to buy.

“Well, don’t you look a picture?”

Her voice drifted to him, low and warm on a chill wind. Well, chill at least for the Marches. Garrett took his time looking toward her, knowing what he’d see, wanting only to savor that moment after a long week away. He was still travel-worn, the day on the train had been cramped and near endless. His suit was no longer pressed, tie undone, and his scarf and coat hung limply from his shoulders. Shades of weary black and grey but for the bright red knit cap Bethany had made him a lifetime ago.

If he was a picture, he didn’t want to know of what, but Essa…well he knew without yet looking that she was a breath he was waiting to lose.

“Eyeing baubles for your gal?”

There was a hint of warning in her voice, a hint of teasing too. Her heels were light taps on the icy sidewalk, steps cautious in her favorite pair of continental heels. He no longer chided himself for being so far gone that he recognized the different sounds of her shoes, or that he knew her favorites.

But she did, and often, grin as wide as the Waking Sea.

“I might be.” Garrett turned slightly from the windowed storefront, leaned on a small stretch of brick and reached in his pocket for a smoke. “Dame demanded pearls not long ago.”

A delicate cough. One that wasn’t fooling anyone. He would pay for that later, if he was lucky, and damned if he didn’t seem to be here lately. Essa drew closer, but still he kept his eyes on the ground. Maker’s breath, he had missed her. He had thought that seeing her that first time after five years was the most foolish he could feel, but this first week apart after his return was somehow worse.

“You might want to reconsider such an expensive woman,” Essa said finally, stopping just shy of the toes of his boots. She was—of course—not dressed for the weather. Her plum suede pumps were season appropriate, but the faint wash of silk on her legs wasn’t nearly thick enough for the cold she didn’t feel. Her calves flexed as she slipped one foot between his. “Next, it’ll be furs, then diamonds, then fancy—”

“I’ll have to ask my boss for a raise.” He lost a point by interrupting her, but now that she was this close, he was itching to have her closer. Garrett fidgeted lightly with his cigar, affected a pitiful sigh. “And she’s a miser that one.”

“Is she?”

She was wearing grey, a neat skirt suit with a high stance jacket, chartreuse piping on the lapels and the seams of a pencil thin skirt. The thick, coiled braid of her dark hair was twisted up in a style that managed to look far more intricate than it really was–Essa wasn’t much for complicated–and upon that perched a trilby hat the same hideous green as her suit’s trim. There was a bold grey and plum feathered pin above the brim on the left, stuck through with a shimmering serpentstone hat pin that Garrett knew was more weapon than accessory.

“A bit too fond of fine clothes and fancy knives,” he added.

She looked like a hoard of riches, gleaming and sharp, depths among depths of treasure and mystery. Garrett tsked at her and she nearly smiled, lips twitching, temptation and taunts merely waiting. She took another step toward him, the hem of her skirt brushing against his bent knee.

“She sounds awful,” she murmured, sparks of laughter shining blue against the gunmetal of her gaze.  “And this gal of yours hasn’t rescued you from your miserly employer?”

She was close enough that he could feel the warmth of her even through the bedraggled layers of his clothes. Garrett tugged off his gloves, shoved them along with his cigar into the pocket of his coat with no subtlety at all in the brisk movements. He held his palms up between them and she smiled. She knew. Of course she knew. Essa carried her magic like hearth fire and he was home whenever he stood near her.

“Wretched dame,” he continued, watching her hands, wondering if she was going to reach for him first. She was wearing gloves too, thin suede the same color as her shoes and he found himself suddenly and irrationally angry at that bit of leather between them. “She toys with me.”

Garrett had intended to play up his feigned misery; he only managed to sound as if he enjoyed it. Essa’s smile broadened, a flash as quick as the wind that swept in from the sea, snapping the tattered awning above them.

“You poor—“ She stepped closer then, knees between his, thighs pressing hard to the inside of his lazy stance. “Poor—“ One palm came up, lay like a knell over the rapid beat of his heart. Her smile was slower this time. “Creature.”

She liked the chase—so did he—and Garrett had found that with Essa there were so many ways of running home.

“You thinking about rescuing me?” he asked..

“Maybe.” She lay between the open lapels of his coat and jacket, chest flush to his. “You’re awfully pretty.”

Her fingers tapped his collarbone in time with his heart and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes flashing as he tracked the quick swipe of her tongue. Her lipstick was red–blood not cherries–and her tongue was pale against the bleed. 

“I do hate to see pretty wasted in a city like this.”

“That’s twice you’ve called me pretty.” He touched two fingers to her chin, tipped her face up to dusty gold of the nearest streetlight.  Her cheeks were bright, the freckles across her nose and cheekbones standing out in stark relief. “You know I hate that.”

“I do.”

She snuggled closer, arms sliding around his back, hands burrowing beneath layers of cotton and wool until the suede of her gloves touched bare skin. Garrett tried to catch his frown, but if Essa had ever missed anything, it wasn’t with him.

“And you know I hate being called a dame.”

She yanked her gloves off, movements rough and terse as she stuffed them into the back pocket of his trousers. She scowled up at him, the expression so perfectly her that he nearly told her how much he had missed her.

“I do.” He grinned at her, mischief unrepentant.   

Essa’s brows drew down dark and heavy a beat before her smile returned brighter for the clouds. “By the Mabari, you ass. I missed you.”

She smoothed her palms over goose pebbled skin, fingers tracing eddies of heat and longing up his spine. Garrett didn’t bother hiding his shiver. 

“You said it first.” 

He slipped one arm around her waist, hauled her up more snuggly against his body as he traced her jaw with the knuckles of his other hand. She turned into his touch, eyes falling half closed. 

“You owe me,” Garrett whispered.

“Dammit.” Her eyes widened, smoke and embers now and he could feel laughter strumming in ever taut muscle. “Dammit!”

She popped him, palm a quickly forgotten sting on his back, more sound than fury.

“I really did think you’d say it first.”

They had spoken only once on the telephone while he was away, a pathetic exchange that lasted nearly an hour but bore few words after the first ten minutes after they had caught up on the case and their days apart. The subsequent moments had been spent listening to one another breathe and definitely not saying a hundred times “I love you” “I miss you” “I can’t wait until I’m home.” They had decided to limit their humiliation to that single call. He had sent a telegram ahead telling her when his train arrived and where to meet him.

“So did I,” Garrett admitted. “But I also thought I’d have your skirt up by now.”

Essa’s laugh was a burst of joy. Her eyes rounded in surprise, lips pulling tight over her teeth before she kissed him, mirth shivering amid the peppermint on her tongue.

“Is that why you lured me to the Market District after hours?” she demanded, words squeezed to stumbling syllables between their lips.

“Maybe.” He kissed her back, slow and sweet, then a rapid peck of merriment—one.  two. three—as Essa counted off each one, fingertips tapping along his spine. “Maybe I wanted to show you these.”

He touched her chin, tipped her gaze from his to the window beside him. Essa frowned.

“Garrett…”

He had known they were for her the first time he saw them, but it had taken him a week away to get up the nerve to simply ask her if she would wear them. No point in buying her something she didn’t actually want. She had a string of pearls of course—pale peach cream and classic, a shimmer like Summerday—but these were blue steel and smoke’s luster, the exact color of her eyes when she looked at him as she was now a storm of desire, obstinance, and boundless love.

“I won’t get them for you if you don’t like them,” he said softly, nuzzling a kiss to her jaw. “And they’re not to replace the ones Rutherford gave you. My ego’s not that fragile.”

She made a little sound high in her throat, as if she might tease him with a well-used rebuttal, but they both knew better.

“I know–” He nipped her earlobe, caught her closer yet when her feet slipped on the slick sidewalk. “–how absolutely vain you are about those eyes of yours.”

Essa pinched him, hard enough that he expected he would have a bruise to wear proudly for the next few days.

“You did say you owed me…” he reminded her, a whisper beneath her ear.

“Fine.” Essa’s sigh was loud and longsuffering as she sagged in his arms. “But this counts for that, and for this whole saying I missed you first thing.”

“You’re paying off two debts with one string of pearls?” he demanded, nipping lightly at her throat.

“Take it or leave it, Hawke.” Her head fell back in encouragement; Garrett caught the back of her neck with one palm. “I’ll indulge your sick fantasy only so far.”

“Not my fantasy,” he rumbled against her neck, just to feel her shudder.

“Uh-huh.” She ran blunt nails down his back, fingers nimble as they darted under the waistband of his trousers. “And I already told you, I’m not wearing an apron.”

Garrett laughed, caught her lips with his and kissed her until they were both breathless and clinging to one another in the cold clear night.

“I don’t want you wearing anything.”


	10. The Worst So Far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because last Christmastime I woke up in a fanfiction fluff prompt. Have 1k words of wholly autobiographical fluff hidden well within the character and story arc of Essa Trevelyan x Garrett Hawke. Their first Satinalia Season, early into Happily Ever After. Also, because we can’t be the only ones who will spend half of a morning communicating in grunts and mumblings…
> 
> fluff. a little smutty.

Essa awoke late on a Sunday, limbs lax and warm, brain still fogged with heavy sleep and gentle dreams.  After an unusually busy few months, she was finally catching up on sleep and she hadn’t realized just how tired she was until she started. Being home alone and together had become too much of a luxury lately, and with the holiday—and all its wonderful social engagements—fast approaching she and Garrett had taken a weekend for themselves.

“We should…”

But she couldn’t bring herself to finish the half-hearted obligation, wasn’t entirely sure she had managed the words aloud anyway. The winter sun was a slant of gold through the blinds,  the angle higher and brighter against her closed eyelids than it should have been, but still filtered soft by sheer white curtains. She knew without looking that they had slept half the morning away, but even before she had come completely back into her body, Essa knew that she wasn’t ready to move.

“Hmmm-nnnnh…”

Garrett’s grumble was part negation, part smug satisfaction, and she felt both coil around her heart, lodge tight amid the wonder she would always carry for what they had found together. His toes were cool against the bottom of her right foot and she rubbed her foot back against him offering warmth. He had one arm beneath her neck, fingers just brushing the tumble of her hair. 

“Mmmhuh…” Essa agreed, jaw cracking as she yawned toward wakefulness.

She was naked, which really wasn’t exactly surprising, though she could have sworn she had gone to sleep in one of Garrett’s undershirts. Surprising to everyone, they rarely slept naked. To what would remain forever her dismay—and Garrett’s amusement—the two of them were proving to be cuddlers this time around. Most nights they started out sleeping back to back with Essa sprawling partially on her side and one foot kicked out from under the sheet, but too often they awoke tucked together like spoons in a drawer. Skin to skin contact got too hot too fast with the two of them unless the mercury dropped toward freezing. Essa hadn’t yet decided if it was better or worse that she was almost always the damn big spoon. She woke too many nights wrapped around his back, one arm over his side, hand tucked in his and held fast to his heart, the layers of cloth between them soaked in sweat.

Didn’t matter, she thought, blinking slowly in the morning light,  _this_  had to be the worst so far.

“Mmm…” Garrett confirmed.

Her hands were in his hair. Which wasn’t precisely the best way to describe the position they were in, but it was the first thing she noticed.  At some point during the early morning hours they had turned toward one another. Now they lay in a shamefully tangled embrace, as if their arms, legs, and lips were caught striving for impossible closeness. Essa had one leg between Garrett’s knees, foot pressed against his calf, toes curling in the ridiculous mabari and snowflake printed pajama bottoms she had bought him years ago as joke that utterly backfired. The man wore them without irony and without apology and, by the Mabari, if he wasn’t adorable padding around the house barefooted with his hair mussed and a tongue-lolling caricature of Caleb grinning up at her from the matching t-shirt.

Andraste, preserve her, she was too damn in love with Garrett Hawke.

Essa made a little sound of frustration, stretched slowly within the confines of their snuggle, utterly unwilling to leave despite her annoyance. Her other leg was hitched up over his hip, and he had obligingly splayed one broad hand across her left ass cheek to hold her in place. Not that she needed it. She was clinging to his head like a sloth to a limb. Her grip had pushed her elbows against the sides of her breasts, lifting them toward his chin. Every now and then he turned his face to nuzzle her softly with his cheek.

He was going to be the death of her.

“We should get up,” Essa whispered, running one hand down his back, fingers teasing the waistband of his pajama pants. Her hand slipped beneath the hem of his t-shirt, thumb moving in a slow arc low on his back and waking his skin to gooseflesh. “The dogs…”

Her lips were pressed high on his forehead, nose buried in thick, dark hair. He smelled warm and clean-–mint shampoo and homemade soap and Garrett–-the mingling of scents decadent in a way that had nothing to do with aftershave or cologne and everything to do with being wrapped together in the timeless and hallowed space of their own bed.  

“The dogs,” Garrett murmured, words falling on her rising pulse, “went out really late last night.”

He was smiling when she looked down at him, staring past the crooked bridge of his nose. He had the decency to keep his eyes closed, protecting the quiet morning from the worst of his smirk. His eyelids crinkled, barely containing his mirth; he looked obnoxiously pleased with their current position. 

“We’ve a little time this morning,” he added. 

Every contented exhale blew cool across the tops of her breasts and she kissed his forehead without thinking, lips soft and earnest as the silent vows they made to one another other day after day. He rubbed his cheek against her breasts, beard a soft scratch over sensitive skin, before he took one nipple in his mouth, lips and tongue moving without mercy or hurry. Essa’s fingers clenched slightly, one hand catching in his shirt, the other against his scalp, nails trailing through the short hair at the nape of his neck until he shivered.

“Do we?” 

She was teasing him and he knew it, and there was such magic in that certainty that for a moment Essa reeled, leaning in to pepper a half dozen kisses to his temple.

“If you want.”  

Garrett’s voice was still a low, sleep-roughened rasp, and he used it against her unscrupulously. The invitation rumbled deep as he moved to her other breast, lips not so much teasing as promising. Essa wouldn’t have thought there was room left between them, but somehow they shifted closer. His fingertips pressed hard against her hip, angling her just right to taunt them both.

“I definitely want,” Essa whispered. She cupped his cheeks in her palms, brushed a kiss to his jaw. “But you’re wearing way too much.”

His grin was quick, eyes flashing open merry and dark and far too awake. She wondered how long he had laid there while she clung to him.

“Only about half an hour.” Garrett grinned answering her unspoken question as he rolled away to shuck his clothes with comical–and flattering–alacrity.

“You know I hate you right?” Essa lifted the covers for him and he moved over her, dropping sharp, smiling kisses to her collarbones until she squealed.

“Your subconscious betrayed you this morning, Trevelyan.” 

So that’s how it was going to be? Essa did her best to scowl, while Garrett smiled down at her, eyes filled with so much laughter they had nearly closed again.

“My subconscious lies!” 


	11. Battle Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This combined a prompt from the oh-so-lovely slothquisitor (“how many doctor bills are you worth, anyway?”) with something I’d been wanting to write for Garrett x Essa, as well as some of my own Christmas Eve misadventures eighteen years ago. 
> 
> A great big thank you to Slothquistor for letting me borrow her amazing Mara Lavellan for a namedrop cameo. <3
> 
> some angst, some ridiculousness, some Essa and Garrett working on early couple stuff. 
> 
> tw: for accidental dog bite 
> 
>  
> 
> Soldier is playing the part of my half-mastiff/half pibble furbrother Petey who was exactly that giant and an all around good guy except that one year he and my goat Sissy (this is a terrible name that gets worse when you know that I named her after my own hated childhood nickname) decided to have a standoff over a pot of pasta sauce my mother had given Petey as a Christmas gift. I…seeing my goat in imminent and deadly peril, decided to launch myself off the top step at my poor unsuspecting dog. My wounded hand is now immortalized in my mother’s Christmas photos and yes, I have a snazzy scar and slight impaired mobility now, decades later.

_**Garrett's first Satinalia back in Kirkwall. (aka Garrett x Essa's first Satinalia after they got back together)** _

Satinalia Eve dawned cool and grey. The air was so full of water—both fresh and salt so close to the Waking Sea—that when the sun finally rose, utterly obscured by the thick cloud cover, all the world was washed blinding white, as if light itself hung trapped in every breath. Essa tossed another bale of hay down from the loft, then stood for a moment staring out the open loft doors. The barn was a little overwarm from being closed up for the night, and while the animals appreciated being snug in their stalls, Essa thought they could all use a little less  _eau de stable_.

She had cleaned stalls all morning, had two wheelbarrows full of horse and goat manure waiting to go to Cari’s compost pile.  The work suited her temper. The day before, she and Garrett had had their first real fight since his return to Kirkwall. Six months was some sort of record for them, one they hoped would be a trend going forward into an actual admitted relationship this time. Oh, they still bickered and boxed and yelled at one another, but that was in fun, even if outside observers might not know it.

Yesterday had been something else.

_“You’re house sitting,” Garrett parsed the words out slowly, temper gilding each syllable with near silence, the only sign that he was well and truly angrily, “for Rutherford.”_

_There was bitterness in Cullen’s name, something she hadn’t heard since her and Garrett’s first discussion about Cullen and Essa’s breakup three years before._

_“We talked about this.” She looked up with a frown, hands pausing over her suitcase as she thought back, making certain that was so. Garrett scowled when she nodded, more to herself than to him._

_“You said you were going to the cottage for Satinalia Eve.”_ _He was still too quiet, too blighted careful, and she wondered what ghost was riding him so hard tonight. The holidays had always been difficult for him–Bethany had worried so much over the ones he didn’t come home for–but Essa had thought that when they were together they had been getting better._ _“I thought you meant for an evening visit with your sister.”_

_Essa placed an old, near-ragged sweater on top of a pair of work trousers._

_“No…” She took a breath, refusing to take his anger personally. She was up for a scrap when it served a purpose, but something told her this was a fight that wouldn’t make either of them feel better. “When Cullen and Cari are in town, they spend Satinalia Eve at Bethany and Fin’s, just like the rest of us.”_

_“So I have that to look forward to as well.”_

_Garrett ran one hand through his hair. He hadn’t yet stepped fully into their bedroom, stood instead within the bright white frame of the door looking far more lost than imposing despite how his broad shoulders filled the doorway._

_“Next year,” Essa replied with a shrug. “This year they’re in South Reach visiting Cullen’s family.”_

_“And so you,” Garrett continued coldly, “what? Go back to the cottage you shared with him for two years? The house that was yours and you spend Satinalia—“_

_Essa held up both hands, palms up and facing him and something in Garrett’s dark eyes flashed._

_“Stop ‘handling’ me, Essa.” His jaw clenched and he reached up to crack it. The sound was loud in the quiet stillness of their bedroom. “Or is there another talk we need to have?”_

_They were both sensitive about their tempers this time. About the other’s feelings and safety. They might take their aggression to the mats in the gym, but neither of them had ever raised a hand to the other without consent. At least not since the early days. Essa never could decide if she felt bad about popping him in the mouth that first time. It was the only violence without warning and, by the Mabari, the man had looked so damned satisfied when she did it, she felt like she had lost._

_“No,” Essa said evenly. “I just don’t think this is a fight we can solve with our fists.”_ _She shrugged. “And even if it was, I don’t want to beat the shit out of you two days before Satinalia. You know I won’t heal us—“ It was a matter of principle there. She had always refused to erase the damage they did to one another. “—and Bethany will kill us if we show up to her party black and blue.”_

_She_ _waited a moment, sighed when he didn't answer her attempt at humor. “Garrett—“_

_She was beginning to fear that Cullen would always be a bit of a sore spot with him, and maybe she shouldn’t blame him. She knew she had an unusual approach to…well everything. Garrett wasn’t the jealous type, but he was protective, and he didn’t yet understand that she and Cullen had broken_ one another’s _hearts years ago._

_And been surprised by how easily they mended._

_“I don’t want to talk about it, Es.” Garrett finally took two steps into the room. “Not again. Not now.”_

_“Alright.” Essa closed her suitcase with a pair of snaps, spun the combination until it locked. “You’re more than welcome to come out,” she added, reaching for her fedora._ _She pinned the heavy wool hat in place with a sharp, decorative stiletto. A Satinalia gift from him a lifetime ago._ _“If you don’t, I understand.” She offered him a rueful smile, but she did really, at least in part, understand. Maker, help them all if she ever met Anders in a dark alley. “I’ll be back for Bethany’s party tomorrow night.”_

_She reached for her suitcase, and then he was there standing close enough to crowd._

_“I don’t think I like you being all reasonable like this.”_

_Essa smiled. “I don’t think I care.” The smile curved sharp and mean. “And you’re being reasonable too in case you haven’t noticed. You didn’t once yell. I didn’t get to threaten to punch you in the teeth or anything.”_

_He lifted his right hand slowly, fingers curling into a loose fist. His knuckles skimmed up the outside of her arm, scars rasping on her jacket._

_“This is stupid,” he muttered._

_“It is,” Essa agreed, stepping close enough that her shoes bumped his._

_“I don’t mean the argument.”_

_“Don’t you?” she smiled, fainter, but genuinely amused._

_“No.” His thumb brushed her cheek. “I’m still pissed.”_

_“And I’m trying to be understanding.” She lifted her face for a kiss. “Angry sex before I leave?”_

_Garrett chuckled, eyes brighter with mirth than anger, if only for a moment._

_“If you’d like.”_

The sex hadn’t even had the decency to be bad. Though why she thought she would have felt better if it was, Essa still didn’t know. She had missed her train, and when she finally left home things between them had been no more resolved. Garrett had yet to come out to the cottage, and they had spoken only a handful of words when she called to let him know she had arrived. They had exchanged I love yous, the words full of longing and overlaid with bitterness for that longing. She had expected to toss and turn all night, but with the windows in the guest room—her old room—open to the sound of the surf and a pair of mabari curled around her, Essa had slept like a stone.

Their first Satinalia back together was shaping up to be a great success.

Essa banged through another hour of chores. It wasn’t midmorning yet, which meant she had all day to suffer before she headed back into Kirkwall for Bethany’s party. Part of her wanted to go home early, sit down with Garrett and try to get him to understand that it wasn’t even about her and Cullen. This had been her haven for so long. She had been happy here. Before Cullen, with Cullen, and after he moved to Seaside a whole fifteen minutes’ walk away. When Cari started working more with the rehabilitation clinic Cullen set up for recovering Templars, it had made all the sense in the world for Cari to stay with Essa, and when Essa started spending more and more time in Kirkwall, it had made all the sense in the world for Cullen to offer to help with the animals they shared. She didn’t have time for hard feelings, because honestly there just weren’t enough hard feelings left between them to hang onto.

Though damned if she could get Garrett to understand that.

“And  _you_ ,” she said, nudging a grumpy Soldier out of her path as she backed out of the stall, “you’re no better than he is, holding grudges over imaginary slights.”

The mabari growled at the door and Essa shoved him back another step. Cari’s milk goats were spending the day and night inside. Momma Goat—Cari could be  _real_  original in her naming—was due to give birth any day now, and the last thing Essa needed was her wandering out to the dunes while Essa was in town. Momma and Soldier had made enemies at some point that autumn, not that anyone knew how, and his antipathy for the large nanny was exceeded only by his hatred of her daughter, Sissy.  Cari and Cullen had been keeping the dog and goats separated, but Essa could see that was not a long term solution.

“Enough out of you.” She locked the door behind her, bullied Soldier out of the barn with force of will and deliberate strides. “Acting like that, I shouldn’t give you the leftovers Cari saved for your Satinalia Eve dinner.”

The hound whined, then loped along ahead of her obediently enough, bouncing through the dry winter grass. Essa shook her head. Greta was still inside, probably sleeping off her morning around the yard. She was twelve this year, healthy if a bit slower than she once was. Essa was mentally preparing herself for the day when she wasn’t, but so far there had been no such signs.

“Hey, old lady.”

The brindle lifted her head from the linoleum as Essa and Soldier came in the back door. Her tail wagged, nub thudding hard on the floor, jowls lifting to show her teeth in a smile that Fin had taught her years ago. Essa paused on her way to the refrigerator, bent to scratch Greta’s ears and was rewarded with a face full of mabari tongue.

"I love you too."

There was a pot of tomato sauce in the fridge. No onions because Cari was allergic so the leftovers were safe for the dogs, and Maker’s breath how they loved it. They didn’t get table scraps often, but holidays were for exceptions, and there wasn’t much left anyways. Essa split what was probably an entire cup and a half between the two dogs.

“Alright, “ she said, spooning Greta’s portion over her bowl of dry kibble, “you can eat in here because you aren’t part pig.”

Soldier whined.

“But you—“ Essa patted his head before adding a scoop of kibble to the pot. “—have to go out into the yard.”

She put the pot at the bottom of the steps and Soldier waited patiently at the top to be told he could go out for his treat, clearly trying to earn back her favor.

“Oh, go ahead.” She scratched his back as they passed one another on the steps, and he paused to lick her arm, tongue lolling happily. “I know you’re not a bad dog.”

The growl surprised her. Essa spun back to face the yard, one hand on the kitchen door, one still brushing empty air. Soldier stood at the bottom of the steps, a single stride from his Satinalia Eve dinner, and there, on the other side of the pot stood Sissy Goat, forty pounds of intrepid audacity, nose quivering above Soldier’s food.

“Soldier.”

She made her voice as stern as she could and for a heartbeat the dog stood fast, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of fury held back by Essa’s determination and his love for her. The mabari had never been food aggressive, but this was something else entirely. This was his mortal enemy over a once a year treat and Essa could see the entire scene play out in her mind. There wasn’t a scenario that didn’t end with Cari’s beloved goat dead on Satinalia Eve.

For a moment the world stood still as a photograph. Soldier and Sissy Goat facing off over a cast iron pot, Essa too far away to be useful. She considered reaching for her magic, but there was nothing she could do that would divert Soldier from his antagonist and anything that might make Sissy run would only make the mabari leap that much sooner.

“Soldier…”

He glanced back over his shoulder even as he leapt, but Essa was already leaping too, praying the brief distraction was enough. She hit the dog hard, shoulder to ribs, force of gravity adding to the impact, and she heard a sharp sound of surprise come from him a moment before his teeth closed around her hand. They hit the ground together, both scrambling for some sort of stability and then the world froze again.

Essa had never actually been bitten by a dog before. Horses sure, but not many, and this was an something altogether different. Soldier’s teeth were sharp for one thing, and the wicked pinch of his top right canine nearly completely pieced the webbing between her middle and ring fingers. She was acutely aware of how effective mabaris had once been in combat, moreso now than ever, but Soldier didn’t move. His bottom jaw was utterly relaxed, more holding her hand in place than anything. He was staring at her, grey eyes wide and worried, as if everything in the world was wrong and it was up to her to fix it.

“Essa! What the fuck!?”

Essa flinched. To her eternal gratitude, Soldier did not, though he did move with her, ensuring that his teeth didn’t rip through her hand at her sudden motion. Garrett stood on the other side of the garden gate and if his scowl had been impressive yesterday it was downright glorious this morning.

“Oh, thank the Maker,” Essa sighed. She jerked her chin toward the damn goat that was still staring—unblinking and probably unbreathing, the asinine thing—across the pot at Essa and Soldier. “Get that goat to the barn? Put her in one of the dog kennels until I can get this—“ she nodded to her hand. “—dealt with.”

Garrett blinked at her. His gaze moved quickly from her to Soldier and back. He blinked again.

“Sometime today would be nice, Hawke.” Essa rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I’m kind of bleeding all over Soldier’s tongue here.”

Soldier whined pitifully. Essa reached up with her other hand to pat him on the head in comfort, but she kept one eye on Sissy, and one on the Mabari who she just knew had added this to the long list of the goat’s sins. She and Soldier breathed a collective sigh of relief when Garrett scooped the unresisting livestock up in his arms and carried her to the barn.

“Well,” Essa said, gently lifting Soldier’s upper jaw with her free hand, “this wasn’t exactly a red letter day for either us now was it?”

The dog moved only when she prompted, muscles tense, concern in his gaze as Essa slowly withdrew her hand from his mouth. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been—she was a fast clotter—but it certainly wasn’t going to be any fun for a few days.

“I’m alright,” she said, patting him on the head. “We’re going to discuss your feud later, but you may as well eat.” Another pitiful whine, and Essa nodded. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “I’ve definitely had worse.”

She trudged through the quiet cottage cradling her injured hand with the other, careful not to drop blood on Cari’s immaculate floors. It was bad luck and worse form to use magic to heal a mabari bite, so she was stuck with whatever it was until it healed naturally. Essa switched the bathroom light on with her elbow, held her bleeding hand over the sink while she turned on the tap. She was standing hunched over with her hand under a steady stream of cold water when Garrett came in.

“Do I need to go kill Rutherford’s dog?”

He sounded so serious, and looked so foreboding with his brows drawn down and his impeccable black suit that Essa—still flooded with nerves, adrenaline, and pain—believed him. She kicked out at his leg without thinking, offering injury for the threat, but the angle was off, the confines of the bathroom not made for fighting. She fell forward, cracking her head on the edge of the vanity and slamming her hand into the bottom of the sink.

“Void take you!” she exclaimed, pain bursting bright and hot within an automatically clenched fist. “If you—“

“Essa.” There was laughter in his voice. She watched in the mirror as it tangled bright through the dark motes of worry in his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt the damn dog.”

He stepped up behind her, one hand on her hip righting her in front of the sink, adjusting her stance so that she wasn’t half sprawled across the cold ceramic. He stood close. Too damn close! She was mad at him after all. If she’d had anywhere to go, she would have stepped away just to spare herself the temptation of comfort and, if she were being honest, to spare his suit the barn grime she knew she was wearing.

“What happened?” Garrett asked, reaching around her to take her hand in his. He held it back under the water, easing her clenched fingers loose with his own.

“I jumped on Soldier to keep him from killing Cari’s stupid fucking goat,” Essa mumbled in a rush. “My hand went in his mouth.”

“And he was kind enough to let you keep it,” Garrett mused.

Essa nodded. “He’s probably more traumatized than I am, poor fellow.”

“Are you going to heal it?”

“No magic on a mabari bite,” Essa said, staring at him in the mirror. “You know that. You’re Fereldan!”

She glared at him.

Garrett rolled his eyes. “That’s just superstition.”

Essa jutted her chin in reply. Superstition or not, she would take her wound and her scars with pride, just like any other mabari wounded in noble combat with his own.

“Fine.” Garrett dragged the acquiescence out into something loud and annoying, dropped a kiss on the back of her head when she kicked him—more cautiously this time. “How many doctor bills are you worth, anyway?”

“I’m going to pretend that’s rhetorical,” Essa said, opening the medicine cabinet and pulling out a bottle of iodine solution and a pack of gauze. “Because I’m sure as the last blight not going to the doctor on Satinalia Eve.”

The regular offices would be closed for the holiday and the ERs would be a madhouse, never mind that they were all a forty-five minute train ride away. Unless, of course, she went to Seaside, and no matter how much she liked the doctor in residence, that wasn’t happening tonight either. Essa bumped Garrett with her hip, nudged him into place beside her, and they fell into an easy, familiar rhythm. She nodded toward the scissors on the shelf before them.

“Besides, what do you mean ‘how many’? It’s been months since Bethany had to patch me up and—”

Garrett slowly held up his right hand and Essa’s words stumbled to a halt. He was bandaged from wrist to mid palm, and she realized now why he had only been using one hand to touch her.

“What did you do?” she demanded. “And how is that my fault?!”

“I cut it on that damned orange bowl of yours this morning.”

“You broke my carnival glass!?” She tried to kick him again.  They could both be jerks, but property damage? Yeah…so much for being understanding. “Fucking serves you right!”

Oh, she was definitely going to beat his ass when her hand healed.

“Not on purpose, you terrible wench!” He dodged her heel. “When have I ever–?!” He looked so outraged she felt a little guilty. “If you  _must_  know, I didn’t sleep for shit last night. Then this morning I nearly killed myself on the stairs. When I got to the bottom, I tripped on that ungrateful mutt of mine.”

Essa covered her mouth with her good hand, but not before he saw her smirk.

“He took your side by the way.” Garrett was glowering at her now, lips pursed and sulky and even with her hand throbbing, she wanted to turn in his arms, press her lips to that pout.

“Please,” Essa mumbled as sedately as she could between her fingers. “Please continue.”

“Laugh it up, Trevelyan.” He took her injured hand in his injured hand, used the other to disinfect the puncture marks at the base of her middle and ring fingers. “I felt so bad when I knocked that damn bowl to the floor that I didn’t realize I was bleeding all over the dining room as I picked it up.”

“Oh, Garrett.”

“Hmmph.” He set the iodine solution on the edge of the sink with a clack. “I realized there wasn’t any point trying to wait until tonight to see you, so I wrapped my hand up in a dishtowel, got dressed, and came straight here.”

Essa eyed the impeccably wrapped dressing on his hand.

“Well, not straight here,” he amended. “Somewhere outside of Kirkwall my brain started catching up to the rest of me. I stopped in Seaside to let Doc Lavellan stitch me up.”

Essa fought a smirk. “She didn’t just offer to heal you?”

With one hand, Garrett clumsily folded half of a gauze pad, forced the shape into something approximating useful given the placement of her injury. He bent over her hand, face hidden by shadow and nearness.

“Told her not to,” he admitted quietly. “Figured maybe I deserved the stitches and the scar.”

Impossible man.

“I’m surprised she listened.”

Mara Lavellan wasn’t known for suffering fools lightly and she was known even less for indulging their guilt or their egos. Templars, especially former templars, were rife with both. Mara’s implacable stubbornness made her a perfect fit at Seaside. She would have been, Essa knew, more than a match for Garrett.

He sighed–loudly. “She thought maybe I deserved them too.”

“You—“ Essa’s eyes went wide. “You  _told_  her we’re fighting?” she squeaked incredulously.

“Didn’t mean to.” He lifted his face, glared at both of their reflections; Essa bit her lip to keep from laughing. “She’s too blighted easy to talk to.”

“Mmmhmmm…” Essa waited until he bent over her hand again, carefully wrapping gauzse around her wrist, palm, and between her fingers. It was an ugly job, but it would have to be. The wound wasn’t in the easiest place to get to. “She’s pretty too.”

“Shut up.” But he was laughing as he secured the end of the gauze with tucks and tape. “And we  _were_  fighting. At least I hope it’s were.”

“Depends,” Essa said, stepping back, yanking off her work tank. There were a few droplets of blood on the hem, but mostly there was dust and dirt and other things she didn’t often mind, but didn’t want between them. “You apologizing?”

“Don’t get used to it.” He sighed heavily, as theatrically as any mabari. “But, yeah,  I am.” He glared down at her.  “It’s still weird, Essa.”

“I know it.”

“But I almost get it.” His shoulders sagged for half a breath and his gaze went distant as if he were surveying the cottage and the yard in his mind. “They’re your animals too.”

“They are,” she agreed, toeing off her boots before fumbling one handed at the button fly of her trousers. Garrett eyed her suspiciously. “You gonna help me?”

He grinned. “I feel there’s only one right answer here. But…” he glanced at her hand, then at his.

“We’ve managed with worse.” She kicked at him, gently now, toes curling against his calf. “But really, I just want your arms around me, and my clothes smell like horses and worse. I don’t want to ruin your—“

She didn’t get to finish. He closed the negligible distance between them and wrapped her in his arms, the gauze around his hand scratching lightly across her bare back as he folded her close and home.

“I don’t give two damns about your clothes, Essa Trevelyan.”

She held tight to his waist, careful of her hand, heedless of anything else as he bussed a kiss to her forehead, light, easy, then another, warmer, more serious to the immediately lifted offering of her lips.

“Your sister is going to kill us,” Essa murmured against his mouth.

Garrett chuckled softly and she pressed more closely into his arms, determined to leave the damned goat in the kennel at least until noon.

“It’s a black and white ball,” Garrett whispered back. “My tux is black, your dress is black.”

He was grinning as she stretched, the fine wool of his suit teasing her skin.

“Gauze is white.”

Essa doubted Bethany would see it that way. She reached for the buttons on his jacket. “New rule?”

Garrett lifted a brow in query.

“No more nights apart when we’re angry.”

He smiled. “Sounds good to me.” He cuddled her to him, trapping her good hand between them. “You didn’t sleep either?”

He rubbed his cheek against her hair, beard tickling, and he sounded so damn smug, Essa couldn’t resist the truth even if she’d ever had a mind to.

“Oh, I slept like a mabari,” Essa said, cheerfully. “I’m only thinking of your health.”


	12. The World's Gone Bananas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just…because dangit. I don’t have to explain anything, do I? 
> 
> *grumbles* Fluff, smut, annoying cuteness, bananas. NSFW. 
> 
> Posted previously on tumblr. I realized today that I have quite a few fluffy, smutty, silly ficlets that follow Essa and Garrett's alternate ending of Smoke. I'll get the other five chapters added over the next couple of weeks.

It was inconceivable, really, just how happy Essa was anymore. Most days she was so disgustingly blissful that she got on her own nerves. Her smile was too quick and too genuine, made her eyes wide with something obnoxiously close to wonder, and made it impossible for anyone to take her seriously before she’d knocked them around a bit. Well…that part she didn’t mind. A bag was good, and Garrett was always more than willing to go a few rounds with her on the mats, but neither of those compared to really cracking a deserving nose.

She hadn’t gotten to hit anyone today though, and she had wanted to, especially after that disastrous incident with the banana peel when she had slipped like some cartoon punchline, arms wind-milling and legs flying straight up into the air. By the Mabari, she hated bananas. Hated the sweet stench when they were just ripening, hated the cloying perfume when they persisted toward that greasy black peel that everyone seemed to think was perfectly acceptable to just toss on the blighted ground. This, she thought, was why she couldn’t work for Aveline. If she were with the brass, everyone who even smelled like they had dropped a banana on the ground would get littering citations.

Kirkwall could certainly use the revenue the fines would bring in.

Not that she would ever see that day. If it could be composted for a garden, it didn’t count as littering. She knew. She had asked. Repeatedly.

Essa drew in a long breath, tried to put the day behind her and she slammed into the house. She winced when the door slammed back against the entryway bench, glass rattling hard enough that she would have to check—later—to see if she’d broken it again. She kicked the door closed behind her with greater care.

“Kitchen!” Garrett called from the back of the house.

“Alone?” she shouted back, the angry edge of her voice already dulling. Dammit, she had worked up a fine temper all the way home, had considered riding it into an argument, maybe a combative romp. It had been too long since they’d fought over anything; she was beginning to have trouble recognizing them.

“Yes.”

He turned toward her as she swung into the kitchen, the clipped staccato of her strides stumbling to a halt as the whole wretched day broke like waves against his unflappable presence. He leaned back against the sink, white shirt sleeves rolled up over darkly tanned forearms, suspenders hanging down against the dark line of his navy trousers.

“You’re home early.”

His sidearm gleamed, dark and freshly polished, recently enough returned to his shoulder holster that she could still smell gun oil and leather conditioner, a pair of pungent bites behind her front teeth.  They mingled with the scent of freshly brewed coffee, the dance of late season honeysuckle, that drifted, fading and golden, from the open window behind him.

“Oh, fuck me,” Essa grumbled, throwing her hat to the table. “I am so gone for you, Garrett Hawke.”

It was a familiar grievance and he grinned, cheeks rising bright above his carefully kept beard.

“Bad day?”  

“Better now,” she sighed, not entirely happy about that fact. Though, Maker, preserve her, she loved coming home to him barefoot and rumpled in her kitchen. Their kitchen, she amended, suddenly twice as determined to get him out of the rest of his clothes, and soon.

Essa strode past him to the garbage bin, resigned to her rapidly deteriorating grump. Some days her foul moods were impossible to sustain and today was going to be one of them. She began undressing with a sigh. Jacket, skirt, her second favorite pair of heels. She stared at the plum suede continentals.

“And now you’re mad about that too.”

Garrett folded his arms across his chest, the movement straining buttons that really just had no business being done up in the first place.

“About what?” Essa snarled. “Maybe I’m just really upset about my shoes.”

He eased toward her, right hand sliding along the edge of the counter, leading the rest of him closer, giving her clear signs of his intentions. She still flinched when his knuckles trailed down her bicep, but sometimes that was the way of it too. So much energy coiled within her, heat and fury that answered his every call, waiting to be soothed.

“Are you more upset about them than being so glad to see me?”

A smug smile teased the corner of his lips and Essa scowled.

“Maybe.”

Absolutely. She only resorted to profane lamentations when the utter contentment of them threatened to overwhelm her. She slammed the lid closed on the bin, turned back to face him fully, nothing left as armor but a haughty expression and two scraps of grey cotton and white eyelet.

“Alright, fine.” She couldn’t help but smile. “I hate being this happy to see you. We’re insufferable enough as it is.”

She took another step toward him before she could stop herself. Garrett bit his bottom lip, not quite hiding his smirk when she took the step back. Essa caught a wink of teeth before she closed her eyes on a groan.

“I’d be gladder if you were naked.”

The surly suggestion sounded more like a plea than she had intended. Essa lifted her chin another stubborn inch.

“Tell me about your day.” He caught her gently by one arm, swept his thumb across the pulse that beat in the valley of her elbow.

“What?” she blinked at him. “You do realize that I just propositioned you.”

“Of course I do.” His grin broadened, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I’m stalling.”

“Stalling? Why in the Void are you stalling? I’m half naked, the table’s mostly clear…”

She folded her arms beneath her breasts, lifted them enticingly. It was Garrett’s turn to groan.

“I just—“ He sighed loudly, then pointed to his empty lunch plate on the counter.  “Like five minutes ago.”

“What?” Essa retorted. “You need thirty minutes before you can get wet or something?”

He snickered. “No, but uh…”

He moved over a bit more.

“Really??” Essa shouted, staring at the shiny yellow peel on top of the compost bucket.

She threw her hands up in the air, paced a few steps angry steps away from him, hips swaying. Garrett made a sound low in his throat, something caught between appreciation and remorse.

“You have got to be kidding.”

That was it. She was going to burn down every banana farm in northern Thedas.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise!” Garrett exclaimed, in a tone entirely too reminiscent of the spouses they often caught cheating on their clients. “I have one every day!”

And she usually stayed at least an arm’s length away from him when he did.

“I know.” Essa covered her face with her hands, sighed in utter defeat. “By the Mabari, Garrett, I know.”

While she bore bananas an admittedly inexplicable, but unmitigated malice, he seemed to think the damn things the Maker’s most precious gift to his children. Regularly extolled their nutritional value, their history, their culinary versatility. She had only threatened him with the inappropriate use of his beloved fruit once, and their compromise was that he treated them like a secret lover while she pretended to know nothing about his indiscretions. It worked out for them.

Most days.

“It’s not like I knew you were coming home early,” he groused, following behind her.

Essa stopped at the table, took a deep breath of air not scented with offensive yellow berries. Garrett stopped behind her, hands sliding in dizzying eddies across her back. His nails skimmed her shoulder blades, managed to turn what sounded like a complaint into something warmer.

“I know,” she huffed again. “Bad day, remember?”

“Which you should tell me about,” he repeated as she reached back for the button of his trousers.

“Sex would be better,” she countered.  “You still wanna?”

He couldn’t see her face, but she knew he heard the grin in her voice.

“Almost always,” he chuckled, pulling her back against him as she slid the button free. So far, the balance of ‘always’ was after an obscenely large meal or when Ester and Carver were visiting and making enough noise to remind them that parents--or aunts and uncles--needed a lot more than a locked door to score any privacy.

Garrett placed a biting kiss on her neck, caught the waistband of her underwear and began tugging them down.

“Are you sure…” he drew the word out skeptically, the fingers of his other hand sliding with deft precision over the back clasp of her bra.  “You’re gonna be able handle the banana breath?”

Essa snorted. “We need kissing for sex now?” she demanded as she worked his zipper down.

“Romantic,” he muttered, breath hissing out as she slid her hand into his open fly and wrapped her fingers around the hard length of him.

“You want romantic, Hawke,” Essa declared softly, but fiercely. “You have to give up the bananas.”

“Not. Going. To. Happen,” he gritted between his teeth as she stroked him.

“Then you had best take what you can get—“

He pushed her forward suddenly and Essa released him on a curse, hands slapping to the tabletop before her for balance.

“Every day,” he promised, bending forward, trapping her arm between them as he placed a line of kisses across her shoulder blades. “You and bananas, Trevelyan, you’re my true loves.”

“I’m going to kick your ass,” she muttered, threat empty of all but longing as he did away with the few remaining obstructions between them.

He dropped his gun and holster into the farthest chair he could reach--that was a lesson they did not want to learn by experience--and smoothed his other hand down her hip. Essa shifted her feet apart, ran her toes along the side of his foot as he stepped between them.

“I know.” She pushed back against him impatiently and he eased into her, drawing from them both a long exhale, deep and ragged, the immediate climb of pleasure undiminished by cherished familiarity. “But later.”

“Uh-huh,” she agreed, pushing her hips back against his on a moan. “Later.”


	13. Laughing Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly my fault, but I will blame Erunamiryene because it makes me feel better and she agreed when I said “there isn’t enough silly laughing sex out there.” NSFW. Silly, laughing, sex. Title take from the poem by Sir William Blake.

“Alright,” Essa said, Very Seriously, eyes narrowed against the mirth he could see shining even in the low light of their bedroom. “That’s enough of that. No laughing.”

“No laughing?” What in the void was this? They were always laughing.

“We’re being romantic.” She kissed a line across his collarbone, lips lingering over old scars. “I lit candles.”

Another kiss. This one on the side of his neck. She didn’t look up, simply waved her hand toward the heavy white candles scattered around the room.

“I saw that,” he murmured, turning to brush his lips across whatever he could reach. He managed to catch her ear. The fine wash of silk chiffon she was mostly wearing whispered over the tops of his bare thighs, an infuriating impediment just as out of place as all the rest. “You also put on the most ridiculous record we have.”

He caught her face in his palms, broad hands cupping her cheeks, fingers stroking into her hair. Her eyes closed in bliss, a reaction so beautifully habitual that he grinned in anticipation of her scowl.

“Stop trying to distract me.” She sat back on her heels, and really, given that she was straddling his hips, it was a better position anyway. He grinned when her eyes slipped shut, lifted his hips to slide his cock through tender flesh already swollen and slick.

“Dammit,” she swatted him. “I said romantic.”

“How the fuck is that not romantic?” Garrett sat up, shifting them just right together, and she whimpered around whatever curse she had been about to throw at him. As if he didn’t know. _I hate you_. That was her favorite. Followed closely by _shut up_.

_Of course you do_ and  _make me_ , being his favorite rejoinders.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not even one of ours,” he added, glancing toward the record player. A sweet, smoky tune drifted toward them, carrying none of the edge they both liked in their music. He pulled her face to his for a kiss that was too brief to meet whatever this new standard of romance seemed to be, then glared down at her. “You’ve been talking with the girls down at the tavern again, haven’t you?”

She stared anywhere but at him, cheeks bright as she fought back a grin. Candlelight shimmered over the curves of her body, left the valley of her throat dark and golden. He licked a kiss into the hollow, tasted salt and sunshine, nibbled up the taut line to her pulse.

“Whatever are you talking about?” Essa managed on a grumbling sigh.

“I’m talking about this.” He shoved the wisp of rose-colored silk from her shoulders. “I’ll wager a week’s pay that you have a bet somewhere in all this. Who was it?”

“Maker take you.” She flushed bright, laughter splotching her chest as it bubbled up to condemn her for her crimes. She finished tugging the peignoir from her arms, threw it to the floor on top of his discarded suit. “You don’t know everything, Garrett Hawke,” she huffed.

But she bit her lip, jaw flexing as she tried to swallow back her giggles.

“I knew it!” He rolled her beneath him, pinning her hands between them as his fingers hurried roughly over her ribs. She was soon screaming, howling nonsense and petitions for mercy that they both knew he wouldn’t give.

“I’m no squealer,” Essa declared furiously before doing exactly that, merriment shrieking into his chest, thrumming around his heart where she belonged.

“The least you can do is tell me who we’re competing against,” he growled, scratching her neck with his beard while she gasped around a full, howling laugh.

“No—“ she gasped. “No competition.”

“Damn right,” Garrett chuckled smugly, grinning when her eyes met his and she chortled, loud enough to hurt his ears.

“We’re uncivilized brutes or something,” she continued, wiggling against him, legs falling open, pressing heat to heat, hard to soft. She hummed in appreciation, and he scraped a tickling kiss against her neck, chuckled when she squeaked. “All we ever do, blah blah--”

He took her nipple between his lips and she stuttered, arching into his mouth willing and wanton as she pinched him for his offense. 

“But!” she continued severely. “We’re losing in the romance department.”

He released her abruptly, and she elbowed him in the head. She dragged her hands from between them, blunt nails raking a shiver from him before she caught him by the hair, holding his gaze to hers. Essa glared up at him, face gloriously grumpy as her body exulted in his inevitable surrender.

“Are we now?” he asked, quiet and low beneath her ear.

“Yes,” she insisted, turning his face to her, kissing him brutally in feigned punishment. Her eyes turned stormy, laughter drifting through like rainbows on the surface of the deep. When she arched up, heart beating slow and languid against his chest, he accepted the offering, sliding inside of her with a smirk.

“It’s my sister isn’t it?” he asked abruptly. Larkson was a menace, he had known it since the day he met the man.

She clenched tight around him, breath exploding from her chest in a barking guffaw even as she pinched him again—harder this time—in retaliation.

“No sisters in the bed!” It was a terrible refrain, but one that they often shouted at the other when the night crept, as this one had, toward the silly hour.

“Well,” he shrugged, knowing precisely how irritating his grin was. “Not mine.”

Garrett leered at her.

“Bastard.” She canted her hips up to meet his thrust and they groaned in unison. “If you must know,” she panted lightly. “It was mine. Cu—“

“Don’t you dare!.” He nipped at her, drawing another crow of hilarity from her lips. “ _He_ is never allowed in our bed.”

Her eyes danced in the candlelight, mischief widening her gaze, laughter shuddering through the easy, familiar rhythm as they climbed.

“Damn shame, that,” she said, laughter spilling sweet and heady as champagne from her lips and eyes, twining with his in a stumbling duet.

“Not,” he repeated with a chuckle. “Going. To. Happen.”

They moved together, the soulful crooning of the borrowed record playing out, until the only music was their laughter, warm and constant, punctuated with gasps and sighs and blessed curses, so much a part of what they had built together that sometimes Garret could swear he felt it echoing in the walls of their home. She was still giggling when her first orgasm took her, and he was, as ever, helpless to do much more than grin down at her like a fool. Her body trembled around and beneath him, such a tangle of amusement and ecstasy that he didn’t make it much past the second climax that shook her.

“We do suck at romance,” Essa snickered as his body poised on the edge and for a moment he faltered, fell down into a smug grey gaze.

“You ruin everything,” he muttered as he kissed her, drew her hard back up the precipice with him.

“I don’t,” she laughed as they tumbled over together.

“You really don’t.”


	14. Sleep Talking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from my end of all fic tumblr celebration:  
>  “I understand the sleep talking, but what I don’t understand is the princess dragon dream and why I’m in it.” This was a little too perfect for Garrett and Essa.
> 
> moderately nsfw talk? I mean, it’s Essa and Garrett, lol.

 

Sunday mornings were his favorites, not that Garrett would admit it. Varric already accused him of getting old, slowing down, and maybe he was, but he had been the last man standing last night at Sera’s stag party and he had managed—when no one else could, mind you—to drag his woman out of the middle of the worst, last brawl before the brass showed up. He’d taken an elbow to the jaw for his trouble, and he was pretty sure someone had bitten his leg, but Corff hadn’t had to carry out his threat to ban them from _the Hanged Man_ for a year, so Garrett called that a good night.

“You’re in a better mood this morning.”

Essa was standing at the stove as he made his way into the kitchen. The sun streamed past the paltry defense of white eyelet curtains, bounced brightly off of yellow walls, and summer-bronzed skin. She was, not unexpectedly, naked, and she was cooking pancakes. She had opened the back door to the morning, though it was a little cool even for him. Garrett yawned, scratched idly at a scabbed-over wound he couldn’t remember taking. The slice across his left pectoral was thin, relatively shallow all considered. Edge of a broken bottle, he thought, maybe a hastily slashed blade. There had been a knife in the mix at some point, which was what had pissed Essa of to start with.

 _Unsportsmanlike!_ He vaguely remembered her battle cry as she launched herself into the fray.

“I was in a bad mood?” Garrett asked, refusing to grin at her in case there’d been a quarrel he didn’t remember. He finished tying the drawstring on his pajama pants, ran one hand through the dark nest of his hair and stared at her, trying to remember.

Getting home was still a bit of a blur. They’d fallen into some bushes at the start of the neighborhood. There’d been some swearing. Essa had “lost” her shirt. It was entirely possible he’d done something that he wasn’t about to apologize for.

“Mmmmhmmm.” She hummed cheerily, flipping the pancakes with her fingers. “Seemed to improve about sunup though.”

She tossed him a smirk and a wink over her shoulder. “Well, mine did. Been awhile since we acted like quite such fools. I had forgotten how good you can be with your hands half-asleep and half-drunk.”

Must be better than he remembered if she was making him breakfast. Garrett stepped up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and tugged her back warm against his chest.

“You’re welcome.” He placed a kiss on her neck, wondered if maybe he could get a reward romp before they loaded up on carbs.

Essa laughed. “I don’t know if I should thank _you_ , or dream Garrett.” She stepped to the side, bumping his hip with hers as she plated the last of the pancakes. “He was very gallant.”

“‘Gallant’?” Garrett frowned, retrieved the syrup and the orange juice from the refrigerator before following her and the pancakes to the table.

“I dare say…chivalrous.”

Essa raised one brow as she set the plate on the table. Whatever he had dreamed, Garrett had a feeling he was going to regret it. She filched the bottle from his hand, took a quick swig of orange juice.

“I am neither of those things.” He leaned in to taste the sweet tartness on her lips, and she kissed him back, lingering just a little in the late morning light.

“Mmmmm,” Essa murmured noncommittally.

Garrett smacked her on the ass, hard enough to sting, hard enough that her glare turned to something smoky, but she was on a mission, and not to be distracted so easily. He must have done a very good job in his sleep.

“No,” she agreed evenly. “You’re not.”

He sat down first, and she plopped onto his lap, began pouring syrup over half the pancakes. She didn’t like as much as he did, so the soggy side was his. Garrett could feel her anticipation singing through her body; it was nearly killing her not to finish her taunt.

“After last night, I understand the whole sleep talking thing.”

So much booze.  Garrett made sound of agreement, determined to react as little as possible to whatever she was about to bust him on. It couldn’t be that bad. Sex dreams were common enough for both of them and last week, she woke them both up mid-orgasm. Not that he was complaining, but he had leverage.

Garrett reached around her to snag a pancake from the plate and Essa swatted his hand. He grinned at her impenitent, dripped syrup over her shoulder before he folded the whole thing into his mouth. He waited.

Essa glared at him. She knew he’d get to it later.

“But what I don’t understand,” she continued, in a careful deadpan that he knew was costing her, was probably going to cost him. “Is the princess dragon dream and why I’m in it.”

Garrett choked. Memory rushed in, filling the space left in his brain by rapidly fleeing oxygen. Essa turned in his arms, stared down smugly into his face while he coughed, hacked, and fought down what had really been too big a mouthful.

“I am not,” she informed him too damn gleefully while he waited to die. “Wearing a tiara and flowy gown, and pretending to be trapped in a tower for you.”

The image was ludicrous, but Garrett almost wished he could cop to it. Confess to some guiltily hoarded desire to see her in a long, pink dress, golden tiara, heart delicate and swooning as he came to her rescue. But that was not the dream, and now he was drowning in sudden, crystalline recall.

“Gar..rett?” Her suspicion drew out the syllables of his name and he did his best to look anywhere but at Essa.

He reached for the juice in front of her. Essa mercilessly moved it out of reach.

“I wasn’t the princess?” she arched her brow at him again, and her foot tapped, bare toes teasing the top of his foot as she waited.

He coughed, and she repeated the motion, tickling sensitive skin. Garrett pounded his fist against the middle of his chest, and didn’t have to feign the pained, panicked expression on his face as his lungs protested his lack of air.

“Baby.” She passed him the juice out of pity.

He took a sip, then a gulp. The lump in throat tasted like crow, but he swallowed that too before admitting, “Not…exactly.”

“I was the dragon?!?!” Essa bounced to her feet, glared down at him with her hands on her hips, breasts swaying far too enticingly, maple syrup making a run that Garrett was near devastated to be missing. “Then who was the damsel you were fondling before dawn?”

“There wasn’t…,” he took another sip of juice to soothe the fire in his throat. “A princess _and_ a dragon.”

Essa’s eyes rounded and the laugh that brayed from between her lips had them both wincing. The shock on her face was almost worth the pain. She slapped one hand over her mouth, stared at him with merry disbelief shining bright in her gaze.

“A princess dragon,” she whispered behind her hand. “Andraste’s knickers, Garrett, your hands aren’t that good. A dragon, no matter how dainty, dainty a princess, would hardly notice you.”

Garrett stared at her for a long, aching breath before he fully caught her insinuation.

“You had a human form!” he shouted as she slid to the floor, arms wrapped around her stomach, failing to contain her laughter.

He kicked at her, but her chortles only erupted more forcibly.

“Uh-huh,” she gasped. “Sure I did.”

His scowl could still terrify the most foolish upstarts, but she was–as always–unphased.

“You wait!” Essa crowed to the ceiling. “Just wait! Until I tell Varric.”

[[There’s a part two if you want it. :D](http://thesecondsealwrites.tumblr.com/post/140715206169)]


	15. The Princess Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after the hilarity of Garrett and Essa and the princess dragon dream, slothquisitor and I were giggling about what might happen next and well...this silliness happened.

Essa did not tell Varric about the princess dragon dream, though by the Mabari she wanted to. Still, it was worth keeping mum, trying to keep a straight face as Garrett eyed Varric with distrust and suspicion every time he saw him. Waiting. It took a few months, but eventually Garrett seemed to realize she had kept his secret. That or he forgot about it. Either way, he stopped flinching every time someone said either the word “princess” or “dragon.”

And well, Essa couldn’t have that.

The dress was easy enough to come by. Cari had one of everything in the labyrinth she called a closet above _the Tourney_ , including a long violet gown in the style of the Blessed Age. The silk was a little snug, Essa had Cari by about thirty pounds of muscle, even now that she wasn’t in the ring for anything more than practice. The puffed sleeves were too tight in the shoulders, but she didn’t imagine she would be wearing the dress long. This was, she realized, an inordinate amount of work to put into a prank that could only go badly.

She was standing anxiously in front of her standing mirror when she heard the front door open, the bell jangling merrily above it. A good day then, she would have had to abort the entire mission if he had come home angry; she wasn’t _that_ cruel. Essa wriggled the bodice of the dress into position. The high Orlesian waist and low scooped neckline were almost indecent. Not that she ever worried about decency. There had been some sort of modesty panel, but as that would have interfered with the perfect shadow of her nearly exposed nipples, she wasn’t having that. She glanced at her reflection, one hand over her mouth to muffle her giggles. She had grown her damn hair out for this. Only a few months, but just enough for long, loose curls to hit her beneath the shoulder blades.

“Where are you?” Garrett called from the foot of the stairs. 

His voice was warm and easy. Maker, forgive her for what she was about to do.

“Bedroom!” Her heart beat hard in her throat as she heard him start up. When he reached the third step from the top, the wood creaked, and she stared around their room, frantic. She hadn’t thought about staging.

“You naked?” She could hear his grin.

“No.” The negative emerged as something of a squeak. “Not naked.”

She waited for the doorknob to turn, then flung herself across their bed, one hand lifted, the back pressed to her forehead just beneath the glittering crystals of her tiara. Her breathing was ragged, and when he stepped into the room he didn’t notice anything but the becoming heave of her barely covered bosom. Essa thought she would squirm out of her skin as she waited for his eyes to travel the length of her body.

Garrett’s face turned purple. He stared at her, slack-jawed and furious while she gasped helplessly for air.

“Maker fucking take you, Essa Trevelyan!” Garrett bellowed.

He took one step toward the bed, then stopped, and if he had been a mage as well, Essa didn’t doubt something in the room would have been on fire. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him so angry.

Essa screamed with laughter.

“Fucking take you,” he repeated while she rolled back and forth across their quilt, sides splitting, sleeves protesting the violence of her mirth. “And fucking keep you.”

Tears were streaming down her face, and still he glowered, fingers clenching and unclenching into fists at his sides. Essa tried to find something--anything--to say. Something that might resemble an apology she didn’t mean. She opened her mouth, and he watched her expectantly. She knew that the rest of the night hinged on whatever she said.

“Ser,” and surely it was the Maker’s work that her voice emerged smoky and quivering. “Are you here to rescue me?”

“Fuck you, Trevelyan.” Garrett stormed out, slamming the door behind him while Essa howled her victory into the afternoon.

*

He didn’t make it far. Garrett stomped down the stairs, face pulled into a scowl so hard it hurt his eyes, but by the Bride he was not going to crack until he was safely away from the house. He stalked through the kitchen, took time to slam both the heavy oak door and the screen, dutifully ignoring the northward tug of his lips. He could still hear Essa’s muffled laughter from the bedroom and he was going to keep putting one foot in front of the other until he was safely in the carriage house.

He slammed that door too, just for good measure, just in case she had managed to drag herself off the bed and to the window that overlooked the backyard. He turned on the radio, found some loud, boring minor league game and turned it up loud enough to rattle the windows. He stared around the workout room, tried to find the best place for his inevitable demise and finally simply surrendered to his barely restrained laughter.

Maker preserve him, she had been beautiful. Ridiculous, but beautiful. And if she ever asked, he would swear to whatever holy she demanded that it hadn’t been the dress, or the crown but the unabashed mischief in her eyes. She had gotten him; that was for damn sure. The last thing he had expected today was to come home to find her swooning across their bed, every carefully costumed inch of her the perfect caricature of a princess dragon. The make-up had been the perfect touch. She had done something shimmering and scale-like around her eyes, across the tops of her breasts. He hoped she didn’t ruin it in her glee. If he decided—and he hadn’t yet—not to pout with her for a month, he planned on enjoying at least some of her work.

Garrett wheezed past a particularly breath-taking chortle. Andraste’s knickers, he should have known the dream was going to come back to haunt him.

“Garrett?” her shout preceded a door rattling knock and didn’t sound the least bit penitent. Not that he expected her too.

He tried to regain some shred of composure, fought his cheeks back down into a scowl. Garrett yanked his jacket off, threw it to the floor and hastily rolled up his shirt sleeves.

Essa knocked again, and he dragged on a pair of fingerless training gloves, set himself in front of their heaviest punching bag and struck, hard, just as she opened the door. He hit a quick rhythm, had spent too many years in front of a bag not to, and kept his gaze firmly on the layers of silver and grey tape that were wound over a dozen injuries to the canvas over time.

She made her way to the radio, lavender silk sheer in the autumn slant of evening and leaving absolutely nothing to an imagination he didn’t need. He knew every curve, every hollow. Still waited with a patience he would never have accused himself of having for any secret her body might yet share. And yet, it was the constant tumble of her mind that kept him ensnared. As predictable as chaos. He could see in her eyes that she was still on the verge of laughter. Essa walked with a too much swagger to be this silly stereotype of a princess she had dressed herself to be, but she was closer to the dragon in his dreams than he was yet willing to admit to her. Shoulders back, chin lifted.

She switched off the radio, and turned to him, arms crossed beneath her breasts. The silk gave up its last hope, her nipples now resting atop the gathered neckline. Garrett hit the bag harder than he meant to and the tape split. Sand trickled toward the floor.

“How mad are you?” she asked as if it didn’t matter.

Garrett didn’t fancy himself a praying man, but he did now. Prayed for breath, prayed to keep his scowl firmly in place. Essa hitched her hip lightly against the radio stand, tapped one barefoot on the edge of the gym mat.

“You got me,” he grunted, turning away under the pretense of retrieving more tape for the punching bag, when really, he just didn’t want her to see the effect she had on him. “Happy?”

“Maybe.” She didn’t try to stop her giggle, but it was at least mostly subdued. “I figured you would yell.”

“Was it worth?” He waved one hand back rather than turn to face her. “All of that?”

“Fuck, yes,” Essa snickered. “Your face turned purple! I don’t think I have ever seen you that shocked.”

Right. Garrett nodded. He could feel her impatience. It hung thick in the room, bright and heady above the smell of old sweat and leather and the last of the honeysuckle fading on the vine just outside the door.

“I really just—“

He didn’t let her finish whatever she had been about to say. They both knew it wasn’t an apology, and he wasn’t one to pout when there were better ways to spend his time. He caught her in his arms, made a note to tease her later for the very damsel-like gasp that left her lips just before he claimed them.

“I don’t know that I ever have been,” he grumbled, trailing greedy, biting kisses down her neck, tongue sliding just shy of the edge of her made-up scales.  “You’re really going to let me have my way with you?”

She blinked at him, as if she hadn’t expected the quick turnabout. He grinned down at her, took her mouth until their laughter mingled on his tongue and they both broke away breathless and needy.

“I am.”

“And you’re not telling Varric about this either,” he muttered, one hand floundering in a sea of skirt. “Where’s the end of this thing?”

She was giggling when he released her, but she stopped when he knelt before her, hands gently grasping her ankles. Garrett slid his hands up toward her knees in a gather of silk. Her legs shook when his fingers brushed the backs of her knees, he looked up to find her gaze storm dark and hungry, lips wet and parted. Garrett grabbed the silk in both hands and tugged. Essa’s gasp echoed the sound of the splitting seam.

“Not the dress!” she shouted.

“You know full well your sister never wants back anything we’ve had sex in.” He bared one long bronze leg, brushed a kiss to the inside of her thigh. “You put that silvery, sparkly stuff anywhere else?”

Essa reached back for the wall and he followed her on his knees. When she was leaning back against the sheetrock, Garrett lifted her knee to shoulder, pressed a hot breath to the scrap of lace she was wearing beneath her skirts.

“You’ll have to check,” she whispered.

 


	16. Balancing the Scales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *snickers at title forever* Well, I suppose writing the smuttiest smut ever (for me) was as good a way to commemorate my final week of writing fanfiction as any. This follows all the silly princess dragon dream stuff. NSFW at all. somewhat prompted by erunamiryene, who wanted “Spicing things up in the bedroom”, and my adorable punk husband who couldn’t let this whole dragon thing go.

“You said you owed me.” Garrett’s voice rumbled down Essa’s spine and she fought to remain still, calm, unaffected as he dragged soft terry cloth over her skin meticulously.

As if he would believe her pretense at this stage of the game.

“I do.” 

She swallowed thickly, almost wished he had gagged her along with the blindfold, but no, he wanted to hear every sound he drew from her, and she owed him. She was still laughing—in every quiet moment when her mind wandered from paperwork or chores, or over drinks with the girls down at the tavern—over the whole princess dragon thing.

“Besides,” she whispered. “It’s a little late to turn back now.”

Maker’s breath, she had let him shave her. Every curl, every scattering of dark hair from her waist down was gone, and she had been completely unprepared for how sensitive her skin would be in its absence. Garrett dragged the towel low over her belly, trailed it lower still and she startled, hips bucking toward him before she could stop them.

“Easy,” he soothed, one hand gripping her waist to steady her. She could hear the grin in his words and the heat of his smile pooled low and hot. “Never too late to turn back.”

He pressed a kiss just below her navel, passed the towel down both of her legs.

“There, I think you’re dry now.”

Essa laughed suddenly. “You might want to check again.”

“Not quite what I meant,” Garrett chuckled. “But nice to know.”

He caught her hands in his. “I feel I may be wasting an opportunity,” he admitted as he rose to his feet. He bent, placed a kiss on her jaw, beard rough against her neck. “Should I explore you as you are?”

Lust tinged his words, they spilled dark and heady against her earlobe and Essa gasped.

“Stay the course, Hawke,” she muttered, knowing not where she found the strength. “You think _your beard_ is itchy growing back in?”

He laughed as she continued. “There may not be a repeat performance of this little drama of yours.”

“We’ll see.” He led her out of the bathroom and into the main room of the carriage house gym. Essa marked their position in the room with her feet, following him slowly.

“Where’s the bag?” she asked when he stopped her in one corner.

“Took it down.” He nudged her right foot with his. “Take a small step up for me.”

She held his hands as she obeyed, could feel the tension running through him. Funny how after all these years they could still be nervous around each other. A wonder too, that they were always finding some new way to surprise or test the other, in the bedroom and out. Essa stepped up onto the short block, and his breath on her lips told her that they were nearly eye level.

“Arms up.”

Essa reached over her head, hands glancing off of the chains from which the punching bag normally hung.

“Garrett…” there was trepidation in her tone.

“Such little faith,” he huffed. “As if I would restrain you.”

“As if you could,” she retorted.

“As if I could,” he agreed.

He caught her hands again, lifted them high, brushed her fingers against the cool metal.

“You can hold on though, yes?”

Essa nodded, grabbed the heavy iron links with her hands. Garrett released her and stepped away.

“Get your bearings, Es.”

She almost snickered. There would be none of that, no possible way for her to orient herself properly in the space Garrett had created around them with the careful preparation of her body. She took a slow breath anyway, tried not to fidget as she stood before him, stretched taut in darkness like some kind of offering. The air in the room was just shy of cold, the heavy silk of his necktie cinched tight over her eyes, tails dragging cool and heavy over her shoulder. He had left her hair up, but a few wisps had escaped the front to tickle her face. She was nothing but contrasts now, hard and soft, cool and warm. The edge of the razor still haunted her skin, had left her shockingly smooth and humming with anticipation. She did not know what he had planned and it stung her veins, left her skin twitching and needy.

“Steady?” he asked as she wiggled a bit on her perch. The low step held firm and she nodded. Garrett placed a kiss on her lips, firm, not lingering. He stepped back before she could kiss him properly in return. “You want this to stop, just let go of the chain.”

“What if I slip?” she licked her lips, grinned at him impertinently.

“Then you’ll miss all the fun I have planned.”

“Fun for who?”

He pinched her, a sharp sneak of fingers to her backside and Essa squawked. She kicked out at him with one foot and Garrett caught her ankle.

“Sure.” He laved his tongue over an old scar. “We’ll start with this.”

When the boar bristles brushed her ankle, Essa choked. There was, she realized, little risk of her letting go of the chains over her head, it was cling to them or topple. The brush--she thought it might have been his shaving brush, but she was recently and intimately familiar with it and this seemed smaller--danced over her skin in maddening whispers. The touch to her ankle had her squirming, but when he moved to a spot on her now shaved calf, Essa nearly swooned.

“Oh, really?” His breath whispered against her skin and then his mouth was there, teeth dragging in gentle torment, tongue sliding over shivering skin.

“This.” Garrett’s voice was low with threat. “Is going to be a very long evening for you.”

He was not wrong. The third time the brush drifted across her skin, Essa had some understanding of what he was doing. The powder was thin and velvety and familiar, the shimmer of silver and pearl she had used for her costume when she teased him mercilessly for his dragon dream. She wasn’t about to tell him that this kind of turnabout was hardly fair play. He was only rewarding her for her bad behavior. The bristles of his brush were rough, the cosmetic like silk ground to powder, and when he brushed it over her pounding pulse, Essa could only gulp for air and sway against her self-imposed restraint.

She never knew where his touch would fall next. He may have started with her ankles, but he did not progress with any predictability. He brushed a touch across her collarbone, then surprised her behind her knees, followed the fault lines of her abdominal muscles, while she whimpered, each sound only seeming to goad him into greater sweeps of langor across her skin. Essa’s beseeching caught in her throat and she fought for her voice, weight held by her arms, grip sliding but holding, the fine rattle of chains over her head the only sound beyond their oft bated breaths.

When fabric stretched, a swatch of something that felt like net, across the flare of her hip, Essa flinched.

“Sorry,” the word was nearly a growl. “Should have warned you.”

She was already climbing, passion a spiraling haze against the backs of her bound eyelids.

“What is that?” she hissed as the coarser cloth scratched lightly over her skin.

“Old stocking,” he grunted. “Fishnet. Makes a pattern.”

Essa bit back a smile, the jolt of merriment easing the fire in her limbs. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“Well, I didn’t curl my hair and put on a prancy dress,” Garrett grumbled, breath hot against her belly. “But yeah, I figured I might not get such a chance again.”

She laughed softly, the sound cracking on a gasp. “You’re killing me, you know?”

“I do.” She shifted, legs parting just a little and Garrett groaned.

“Maybe, I didn’t know,” he amended, leaning in to kiss the wetness from the inside of her thighs. His mouth hovered, hot and too damn low. Essa nearly wept when he caught her legs, held her too still to be of use. “Not enough. Maker’s breath, Es, you should see you.”

“We’ve a perfectly good wall of mirror opposite me,” she reminded him. Was that her voice? She sounded feral, wanton. There was something new in the whiskey dark syllables.

“Not yet.” He kissed her again and then he was gone; her skin felt unusually cool in the absence of his mouth.

Garrett returned to his work, brush tapping quickly, a mad stippling over her most pronounced curves. The netting stretched over her shoulders, then her breasts. His breath was a torment across tight, straining nipples, but he offered her no relief. Her stomach was outlined, arcs of powder sweeping dangerously low before he knelt before her.

“Almost done,” Garrett promised.

Essa thought she was going to die when the netting stretched across newly bared skin. The open weave was rough above engorged lips, and the tapping of the brush so close to her clit had her writhing. She clutched at the chains over her head with shuddering desperation, tried to decide if it was worth letting go. The bristles of the brush were gentle, and far too much, she bit back a strangled sound, something between a sob and a moan.

But she didn’t let go.

When he eased back, her breath exploded from her lungs in great shuddering sobs. “Are you through?” she asked, broken, near to begging. She had never wanted him to fuck her so badly.

“No.”

She couldn’t hear his steps, but she could feel him circling around her. Her skin was starved for true contact, breasts heavy, nipples tight and aching. She had tried to lean into his hands when he brushed silver velvet against her skin, but Garrett would have none of her wiles, and he said so, laughing softly as he put unwanted distance between them. He had been teasing her for at least an hour, applying with painstaking deliberation so many shimmers to her skin. Essa held her bottom lip between her teeth and prayed to whatever deity that had given him such unnatural patience for some of her own.

“Garrett…”

The brush was moving over her spine now, across the dimples above her ass. The bristles kissed her shoulder blades, dotted sharp against the back of her arm, and every nerve in her body picked up that incessant measure, dragged it down to her core until she was dripping, pulsing in time to every touch of the brush to her skin, and yes, Maker, she was finally pleading.

“Touch me. Maker damn you, Garrett Hawke, touch me. Please.”

His mouth pressed against her nap then, wide and open and consuming, teeth scraping the sides of her neck, holding her near trapped and vulnerable. There was something primal in the gentle embrace of his teeth, something almost possessive, for all that neither of them were, and Essa came undone with a shout, the orgasm taking her completely by surprise. Her hands unclenched, clenched again on empty air, and for a moment, pleasure was hazed with panic as she floundered for the chain above her head.

“I’m going to guess you didn’t mean to let go.”

Garrett sounded as surprised as she was as he caught her hands in his, fingers threading and tangling with hers and cold iron as her body tried to shake apart in ecstasy.  Essa leaned back against him, boneless and soaring, his chest solid against her shoulders.  

“Fuck.” The expletive was a rough endearment against her neck. “I had no idea I could—that you could—“

Essa laughed, breath still coming in short, harsh pants. “Andraste’s name,” she vowed. “I didn’t either.”

By the Mabari, he hadn’t touched her. Well, he had touched her alright, quite a lot, for what had to be for-fucking-ever while he covered her in silver. But she could count the kisses he had rationed her on one desperately grasping hand, and he had not touched any part of her that was clamoring for him.

“Please tell me you’re naked.” He wasn’t standing nearly close enough to her. Essa stretched back, hips seeking.

“I am.” His grip on her hands lessened. “But I’m going to let you go now.”

“Maker fucking take you,” she swore. “Garrett.”

“Just for a second.” His hands were on the knot behind her head and she sighed with relief as he began to unbind her eyes. “I want you to see.”

He hadn’t been able to empty the room, but the candles did a good enough job for him, casting everything but the mats central to the floor in gentle shadow. He had brought a quilt out from the house, spread it out close to the wall of mirrors, but as Essa’s eyes moved through the tawny light and over their reflections, she knew she wasn’t going to make it that far.

Garrett’s time and patience had not been wasted. He had sundered her skin with scales, made her something powerful and ethereal all at once. The silver shimmered, fine sheens of dust and heavier patterns across her sun-bronzed skin.

“You made me a dragon,” Essa’s astonishment was hushed. He set his chin on her shoulder and grinned at her in the mirrors.

“I did.” Garrett’s hands were on her now, as greedy as his stare. Rough fingers traced the careful edges of his artistry. “You can let go now.”

“No.” Essa clung.

“No?”

She arched back toward him again. “I want you to fuck me here.” She met his stare in the mirror, grinned when his eyes fell darker, more dangerous. “So that I can watch.”

He didn’t dodge her pitiful advances again, and Essa thanked the Maker, Andraste, the sweet Mabari, and anyone else listening when Garrett stepped flush against her. He was cooler than she was, which really meant that she was hot, too damn hot. His cock lay hard and heavy against her ass and Essa moaned, pushed back against him. Her blood heated even more..

“You can take your time later.” She canted her hips back, tried to guide him with her movements. She needed him in her. Now. But standing as she was they were close enough of a height. She was at his mercy and they both knew it. “Garrett, please. Don’t make me beg.”

His laughter rumbled into her back even as his hands circled her waist, lifted her just so, tipped her hips up and back until she was on her toes, the angle awkward against the pull of her arms, but just shy of perfect.

“You’re already begging, Essa.”

He thrust into her before she could reply, one sudden, swift movement that seated him fully within her. Essa’s cry bounced off of the walls, filled the small room with harsh echoes. The candles stuttered, flames leaping high.

“Fuck, you feel amazing.”

His lips were on her shoulder, her neck, his palms sweeping low across her stomach. Essa watched in the mirror, enraptured as his hands wandered over flesh she could hardly recognize as her own. His fingers brushed low, swept across skin bare of all but silver shadows, teased at the tight bundle of nerves while she watched him slide in and out of her body.

“Garrett.”

“I’m going to feast on you,” he whispered against her neck, his eyes only for her as she stared at their reflections. “Can you imagine what my beard is going to do to you now?”

She had been on the edge for so long, she hardly noticed the fall until she was shuddering around him, eyes falling closed, her body blazing.

“Don’t,” she stuttered as his hands moved back toward hers. “Don’t touch the chains. They’re hot.”

When she opened her eyes, they were searing blue, and while this wasn’t the first time passion had called fire to her body, it was the first time in a while. Garrett laughed, reckless and trusting and hers. Essa grinned at him, brazen.

“Sweet, fucking Maker.” His grip was bruising as his eyes sought hers. He lost all focus, all sense of rhythm, hips jerking against hers in a frantic pace of shattered control as her trembling body pulled him to orgasm. “You really are my dragon, Trevelyan.”


	17. Cover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> happywife416 sent me the prompt: “Bury me beneath nature’s beauty.” So here you go, these losers on a romance novel tropey case. Because well...the do actually have a job...
> 
> Not that we can expect them to behave on it.

“Carry me away unto the wild, desperate wilderness,” Essa’s voice was soft, earnest, each line of the poem a prayer. Garrett almost believed her, but for all her love of the neo-Transcendentalists, she was not one to wander a garden in yards of breezy chiffon mumbling sonnets to the night. “Bury me beneath nature’s beauty.”

Essa as bait would never cease to amuse him, though he was finding her more inspiring than amusing tonight. Their case had brought them to a ritzy estate outside of Val Royeaux, to a costume ball no less. The host was a world-renowned academic. A professor of literature, a poet laureate, key figure of the revisited Transcendental movement. Essa had all three of his books. One in particular was always on her nightstand, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from taking the money of his very unhappy wife. The infidelities she didn’t mind, the unnecessary expense of an unconfirmed summer estate in the Emerald Graves…well that she wasn’t happy about. Essa was after an invitation.

“I am almost positive,” Garrett said, watching her pace through the bottleneck of the Marquis’s spectacular hedge maze. “That this counts as entrapment.”

The wide avenue lay in the center of the labyrinth, and was not filled with the usual topiaries or boxwoods sculpted into exotic shapes and animals. A half dozen brick paths emerged from the tall evergreen walls and converged on a magnificent water garden. Fountains splashed in each of the corners and a long, shallow pond dominated the center, filled with golden fish and pristine water lilies, scales glinting silver in the moonlight.

“You’re a long way from the party,” Garrett added as he might to any newly met pursuit.

“The others floundered yet amid the maze.” She tipped her head to one side, toward the murmuring laughs muffled by greenery and water and distance.

“But not you.” He approached her with what any other might perceive as polite caution.

Essa reached up nervously to adjust her mask, fidgeted with one long dark curl.

“Not me,” she said breathlessly, gaze darting toward the heavier shadows.

Garrett fought back a grin.  She shrugged, the gesture delicate, so not her that he could only pity her mark. Essa paused to drop her book on a stone bench, eyes soft and beckoning as she ducked behind a trellis of roses, disappearing into the night.

She was playing the false ingénue—the Marquis’s favorite—with more enthusiasm than Garrett had expected. Not that the Marquis yet knew the first part of her assumed character, only the latter. Essa had been stumbling and shy when they were introduced, flustered by his fame and her near stuttering confessed love of his work. How she had managed to blush on command when the man flirted with her, Garrett would never know. Her mask wasn’t quite heavy enough or large enough to be useful. She had chosen the white lace just for that reason. It’s paltry obscurity branded her a foreigner, a naïve Marcher daring to brush elbows with the decadent, beguiling sea of Orlesian elite. Dressed as a muse of spring—her excuse to wear layers of sheer white chiffon, a flower crown, and not much else—and Essa was a very specific kind of temptation.

Garrett listened for the others, lingering in the garden, until someone drew close enough to see him follow Essa into the lover’s alcove. Roses grew in thick abundance, mostly wrangled across iron trellises and a wide arch to form a bower beneath. There was a bubbling fountain, some ridiculousness involving naked nymphs and swans. Essa sat in the far corner on a high backed swing, the chains of which were twisted with climbing roses so dark, their petals might have been black. The air was scented sweetly with shadows, and Essa’s bare feet were pulled up beside her, hands clasped in her lap daintily, all pretense of primness ruined by the mischief in her eyes.

“Reputations, Miss Albright…” Her lips twitched at her cover and Garrett reached for his bowtie, pulled it free of its knot with deft fingers. “They take lifetimes to build.”

_Weeks_ , she mouthed, holding her hands out to him.

He joined her on the swing, sitting sideways against one arm. She turned toward him, flowed like moonlight into his embrace.

“Moments,” Garrett murmured against her lips. “To destroy.”

“That’s the plan,” Essa whispered back, hands skimming the buttons of his shirt, his tuxedo slacks. He lifted one brow and she grinned. “Miss Albright’s tempting innocence needs to be…”

She licked her lips, scooted down to slip one hand into his gaping shirt.

“Debauched,” she continued, pulling his undershirt from his slacks, bending to place a kiss on the strip of skin suddenly exposed to the cool night.

Garrett groaned. “I thought this was–” _part of the act_. The loud burr of his zipper sliding down kept him from finishing the statement.

“It was,” Essa nuzzled against his stomach, set her teeth against the lower curve of his navel and dipped her tongue into the shallow depression. “But I forgot how much I love you in a tux.”

She smiled low against him. “You don’t really mind do you?”

“Am I dead?” Garrett asked, hands sliding into her hair.

Her laughter puffed soft against fine wool, then soft cotton, and finally, hot, bare skin.

“Doesn’t look like it.”


	18. Ringside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This incorporated several prompts from tumblr. Essa and Garrett were also the couple voted to feature in this, my final smut. I think it's fitting enough for these two though.

Kirkwall summers were their own special brand of misery, and today was no exception. The air hung hot and heavy, until Essa felt she was breathing steam. The two extra degrees that her body ran above everyone else’s normal made the oppressive heat almost dangerous and she had taken Bethany’s advice to stay home on such days, to work on paperwork or hold office hours for their clients. She had every fan in the bungalow turned on high, every window open to the shaded yard. If there was a breeze, it was only the paltry offering of the sea and barely stirred the blinds. Even the brine in the air was oppressive, pungent rather than balmy.

She hated everything.

The bell above the front door jangled and Essa groaned. She had meant to lock it, put the closed sign out, but it was too damned hot. She had trudged through to the den—the coolest room in the house—a little after noon, lamenting the warm leather sofa even as she sprawled across it.

“We’re closed until three!” she called, praying that whoever had come in would just go away.

“No,” Garrett answered from the foyer. “We’re closed for the day. I just put the sign out. It’s too fucking hot and I promise no one is moving beyond the beach and the darkest bars until sundown.”

“Maker bless you, Garrett Hawke,” Essa managed enough of a breath to shout.

“And I brought ice cream,” he added from the doorway.

“Maker bless you twice.”

Essa lolled her head toward him, stared through the dusky shadows with a smile. He looked only somewhat less miserable then her, down to rolled up shirt sleeves, white button down clinging to sweaty skin. His dark hair was too short to be a mess, cropped close in the first heatwave of Cloudreach. She was completely smitten with the winks of silver at his temples.

“It’s not melted?” Essa asked, glancing at the brown paper bag in his hands.

“Beth spelled it to keep it cool.”

“I owe her flowers.” He smiled and she smiled back, tried not to be too annoyed that he had managed to break her bad mood just by walking in the door. “Did you have a nice lunch?”

“We did.”

Essa started to sit up, but most her skin was somewhat stuck to the leather of the couch; it just didn’t seem worth it. “And your lead?”

“Didn’t pan out.” Garrett drew far enough into the room to stare down at her. His bark of laughter had her grinning too. “What would you have done if I’d been a client?”

She shrugged one bare shoulder. “Asked for more money?”

“A lot more money,” he agreed, bending to drop a kiss on her pursed lips and the paper bag he was carrying to the table beside her. “Keep that cold for me.”

“Fire mage,” Essa reminded him on a yawn.

“Who has managed enough ice to freeze the cages of the rotating fans so that we get cooler air,” he retorted. “I think you can be trusted with the ice cream long enough for me to shower. I’ll bring back spoons.”

She scrunched up her face, pretending to consider. “Naked?” she haggled.

“Mostly naked,” he countered. “Pants negotiable if you’ll cool the sofa.”

“You drive a fair bargain, ser.”

*

The storm rolled in while Essa was waiting for Garrett to shower. Dark clouds, scented green and silver with rain, crowded across the sky, dropped the temperature back toward restful, teased honeysuckle, sweetpea, and salt through the open windows. The first crack of lightning was close enough to Kirkwall to knock out the power, but the rising winds made up for the loss of the fans. They ate ice cream in the near dark, listening to the thunder roll deep below their skin, chatting in the slow, incomplete phrases of best friends and bonded couples about the wicked grace game planned for that night.

“Varric?” she asked, head tipped back on the rolled arm of the now cool leather.

“Still mad that we canceled last week,” Garrett sighed. “He’ll be here thinking to win all our money.”

Essa laughed. “Fin too.” Her legs were stretched across his, the soft linen of his sleep pants an uncommon midday luxury. “Side bet?”

“Always.” He fed her a spoonful of ice cream—tart summer berries and cream—and Essa’s eyes rolled back in bliss.

“I expected death by chocolate,” she admitted, licking her lips, breath catching in her throat as he watched her tongue’s foray.

“Nah.” Garrett leaned forward, his eyes alight with mischief as he kissed her. “Your favorite this time.”

“Mmmhmmm…” she kissed him back, tongue sweeping into his mouth chasing berries and cream and him. Always him. “You want something.”

“I always want something.” He nibbled the admission--so close to her own--against her collarbone. “But no more than usual today.”

Essa laughed, abandoned her mostly empty bowl on the table and shifted her body to accommodate him. The den was cool enough for them to touch properly now. He placed his bowl on her stomach, held himself up on one arm and mostly over her, his other hand holding his spoon high above her lips. Essa eyed both spoon and grinning man with suspicion.

“You still don’t trust me?”

His grin broadened as he tipped the spoon down. She had to open her mouth fast enough to catch the stream of ice cream soup or let it hit her in the face. She was, thankfully, mostly successful. Essa swallowed, then scowled up at him.

“How can you ask me to trust you again after what happened last Tuesday?”

Garrett repeated the gesture more slowly, this time too low for her to catch. She glowered at him he drizzled a cold, sticky line over her throat.

“I will remind you.” He moved his empty bowl to the table, leaned forward to lick a sticky sweet trail down her neck. “That you were equally culpable.”

“I…” She murmured, voice low against the roar of the rain.  “…will deny it.”

Essa ran magic-cooled hands up his back, her blunt nails scratching lightly along his spine, leaving a wake of gooseflesh behind his sigh.

“Of course you will.”

Garrett slipped one arm beneath her waist, lifted her just enough to slide her down so that she lay flat on the couch beneath him. Essa moved her hair from under her neck, spread the thick waves out against worn leather, the dark browns so alike she knew they faded into one another’s shadow. She dropped one leg to the floor, propped the other bent knee against the back of the couch, offering herself effortlessly. Garrett grinned when she lifted one brow in unnecessary invitation, leaned toward the tufted leather to brush a kiss over her lifted knee before he sat up, standing just enough to slip out of his pants. She reached toward the candles over the mantle, and the flames lit, leaping gently behind hurricane glass.

Firelight danced with lighting across the afternoon shadows on his skin, and the curtains snapped wetly in the wind as Garrett came back to settle comfortably between her legs. He was smirking when she offered her mouth. The curve of his smile held hers for a moment poised, slick and full, an almost clack of teeth. Their bodies found familiar repose, but the mood was too gentle as the storm raged outside, too languorous. The patience in his hands always knocked Essa off her guard. His palms smoothed down her body, collarbone to breast, breast to hip, and he kissed her between deep, filling breaths, as if all he wanted in his lungs was the warmth of her. Every brush of his lips was one of leisurely splendor, and Essa kissed him back, a deliberate clinging of lips, chanting _slow. slow. slow._ in her head, as if her heart hadn’t suddenly begun a rapid tattoo against the cage of her ribs.

As if her body wasn’t falling into the spiraling, climbing, soaring of them.

Essa’s fingers fumbled clumsily against the back of his skull, hips rising, body arching into his endless touches, pleading silently. There was no room for their usual banter. Even laughter hovered, just beyond the thick curtain of rain, the persistence of thunder. She pulled his mouth from her breast, hissed when his lips clung, drawing out the warm pleasure into a gentle sting before he released her nipple, rubbed her once with the scratch of his beard before his mouth was on her again, vanilla-sweet and berry tart and bright notes of her own sweat mingling beneath. In another breath she might have devoured him, but Essa knew that look in his dark mystery of his eyes, there would be no rushing him through loving her.

Garrett let her take his weight, chest a tender crush against her breasts, belly flexing against hers as he slid his hands down, canted her hips to meet that first perfect slide of joining. Essa bit her lip against a moan, his sigh puffed against her neck before he kissed her pulse, sipped at the frantic beat of her heart before he moved within her-- _slow. slow. slow_ \--until she was writhing beneath him just to feel the cool press of his skin on hers.

 _Garrett_ but even his name was a silent prayer, one she knew—more certain of him than any distant deity—that he heard. His lips were on her breast again, teeth and tongue tight against the straining peak when the first climax claimed her, slow and honeyed. He stilled within her, eyes heavy-lidded as her pleasure swept like growing fury to surround him. Garrett watched her face, lips moving without words, the mute recitation of some poem lost and found..

His kisses stole to her lips again, hips falling back into a protracted, measured rhythm and gradually—so gradually—Essa’s heart and breath sank languid and cool, focus washing like the rain-drenched air over her skin until she was only with him, not the climb, not the pursuit of blinding, blazing delight, but the twining of their breath, the deep, wondrous abiding of his heart against hers.

She wasn’t expecting the second orgasm, saw by the smirk he didn’t quite hide behind the intensity of his gaze that Garrett was. He went motionless just as before, teased out another dozen shivers with his lips on her throat, his hand rough on her breast, knuckles soft, palm rasping, until Essa was gasping beneath him, fingers clawing at his back, lips pressed delicately to his shoulder.

After that she lost count. Time became nothing but the storm, the stuttering summit, the rapturous plummet, and even that eventually faded. Thunder and clouds became a canvas for candlelight and Essa’s body was made incandescent beneath him. Garrett moved between faltering breaths, lifted her again with kisses, every touch careful and slow and precious, until her head was too heavy to do more than pitch back and forth on waves of desire, lips seeking lips, shoulder, collarbone, whatever she could reach as he cast her again and again against the fierce wonder of them both.

 _I have you_. Not that he said the words aloud, but his hand was there on her neck, fingers splayed to cradle the weight of her head. His lips skimmed up the slope of her throat as he moved within her until, yes, oh, yes, his lips were finally on hers again.

 _I have you_ she promised between deep, drugging kisses, hands gliding in anguish and ecstasy down to his hips, entreating. He was moving faster now, not much, nothing like the frantic rush of so many other times, and Essa fought passion’s haze to meet his eyes, to hold the endless torrent of them. This time, when her orgasm rose, tearing another gasp from her throat, knocking her away, setting her adrift too far from him, Garrett called her back, fingers brushing her cheek, as he plunged with her.

*

“Well,” Essa sighed, a lifetime later, when she thought she could move without tears shivering from her eyes. “That was….”

“Honest?” Garrett asked. He opened his mouth over her heart, licked wide over the deep, sated pulse.

“Something like that.” Her lips trembled, exhale tumbling from a suddenly tight chest. “Maker’s breath, Garrett…what in the…?”

He chuckled, the sound slightly louder than the abating storm. “You’re the one always in such a hurry.”

“And thank the Mabari for that,” Essa whispered, threading her fingers through his hair, watching gold and silver light glitter against the black. “You would have killed me by now.”

She pressed one hand to her heart, fingers brushing cheek as she tried to lighten the burden of cherishing with words that quavered.

“Es…?” Garrett shook his head, placed a kiss over each of her knuckles. “You _know_. You do.”

He rubbed his cheek against her skin, wonder and just a hint of worry in his eyes. Essa could only shake her head in reply.

“I do, I guess.” She frowned, ran her tongue over suddenly parched lips. “I do,” she repeated, more strongly this time. “I just…I suppose I forget, how much.”

She pushed at him and he sat up, leaning back against the far arm of the couch while her body cooled and her heart filled her eyes. She smiled through her own foolishness.

“We’re so easy, Garrett.” She nudged his calf with her toes. “Every day it’s so blighted easy to just be with you. To love you. I suppose I forget the magnitude.”

“We both do.”

He reached for her, and she moved across the cushions toward him, let him tuck her against his chest. Rain drummed a heavy lullaby on the roof and Garrett’s heart beat against her cheek, as steady as the turning world.

“And we have to,” he added, voice stretching toward sleep. “Who could survive in such constant brightness?”

He kissed her hair, trailed his hand down her neck as he wrapped his arms around her. Essa hissed.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, moving her hair, staring through the shadows as she sat up.

“I...don’t…”Essa ran questing fingers over her neck, was surprised to find a raised pucker of angry skin. “Oh.”

Memory washed over her, sent her blood simmering all over again. _Garrett’s hand on her neck, thumb skimming her pulse as he held her lips above drowning._ Essa settled back against his side, placed a wet kiss over one pebbled nipple, followed it with a peck when he grumbled something about “diminishing returns.”

“You remember?” he asked, sounding just a little pleased with himself as another yawn cracked the question wide.

“I remembered,” Essa laughed, fighting back her own yawn. “Do we have time for nap?” she asked, not entirely sure she cared if their friends arrived to find them both naked on their couch.

“We do.”  

He ran a fingertip over her scratch, mumbled some wordless reminder of his outstanding question.

“ _This_ ,” she said, pulling his left arm over her shoulder and finally lifting his hand to her lips. In the guttering candlelight, the simple gold band that encircled his ring finger glowed faintly, innocently, looking nothing like the menace she now knew it was going to be. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

Garrett laughed, pulled her closer against him. “No, it isn’t.”

“Wanna bet?” she demanded.

He snorted, tugged gently at a tangle of hair, and turned her face up to his.

“What do I get if I win?” He growled against her lips.

Essa laughed, wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him. Because really there just wasn’t another answer to the impossible man.

“Is there anything left?” she asked.

“Always another record, Lady Hawke.” His fingers tightened in her hair, and Essa’s eyes slipped shut at the small burst of pleasure.

“I am not,” she insisted, voice dragging low as his lips pulled back to tempt. “Going. By. Lady Hawke.”

“But that’s my favorite book.” Garrett’s plea wasn’t fooling her in the least. He brushed her lips with his chin, tickling her with his beard.

Essa snarled. “Go to sleep, Hawke. Be content with your dragon.”

He nuzzled laughter and kisses against her smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this ends the ship that was never supposed to be a ship. Thank to you to everyone who jumped on board and cheered and screamed and made me feel only marginally less guilty for writing a ship I never intended to love so darn much. I know that there will always be devout team Cullens for Essa, just as there ended up being quite the following for team Garrett. Honestly, I like that happiness is absolutely possible for either couple, and I really enjoyed indulging in this sort of alternate ending for Smoke. Thanks so much for joining me. These two were wild right from the start and I imagine they'll be driving one another (and everyone else) batty for the rest of their lives. <3


End file.
